An activist group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop 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 artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the audio 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 Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, 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 huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
