A digital rights group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Observers noted the apparent data breach could aid AI companies looking for data to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, 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 fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of Spotify”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
