An activist organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Observers said the seeming data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
