A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Observers noted the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
