An activist group has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers noted the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners 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 great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
