An activist group has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
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 offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed 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.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
