A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing 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 shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
