An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the apparent data breach could aid AI companies looking for material to train their technology.
An entity 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 artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
