An activist organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could aid AI companies searching for data to train their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music 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 claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is sadly 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 copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
