An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Observers noted the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote 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 Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary 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 Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
