An activist group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Observers noted the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for material to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology 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 pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
