An activist group has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Observers said the seeming data breach could aid AI companies looking for material to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
