An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed 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 start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
