An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could boost AI companies searching for data to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired 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 claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of the service”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary 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.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear 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.
