An activist organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the seeming data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed 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 start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted 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 personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
