An activist group has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could aid AI companies searching for data to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote 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 Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally 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 information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
