A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
