A digital rights organization has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service 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 ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed 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 beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
