A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Observers said the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of the service”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
