An activist group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Observers said the seeming data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build 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”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
