A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for data to train their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-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.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
