An activist organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of the service”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.