An activist organization has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for material to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired 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.
They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
