Advocacy Collective Claims to Have Extracted Countless of Music Files from the Streaming Giant
An activist organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid AI companies looking for material to train their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of the service”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright 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 ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.