An activist group has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired 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 ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital 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 “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of Spotify”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
