A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers said the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” 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’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding 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.
