A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could boost AI companies searching for data to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said 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 hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio 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 ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, 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 start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors 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 ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
