A digital rights group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Observers said the apparent data breach could boost 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 Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public 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.
The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
