An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could boost AI companies searching for data to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish 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 questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify 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 pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method 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,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of the service”. The executive added it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
