A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid AI companies searching for data to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
