A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. He said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, 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.
