A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could aid AI companies searching for data to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, 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 questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said 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 Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup 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 enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
