An activist group has stated to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers noted the seeming data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify 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 entire catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of the service”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
