A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts noted the apparent 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 entries of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken 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.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
