Adversarial Attacks on Copyright Detection Systems

It is well-known that many machine learning models are susceptible to adversarial attacks, in which an attacker evades a classifier by making small perturbations to inputs. This paper discusses how industrial copyright detection tools, which serve a central role on the web, are susceptible to adversarial attacks. We discuss a range of copyright detection systems, and why they are particularly vulnerable to attacks. These vulnerabilities are especially apparent for neural network based systems. As a proof of concept, we describe a well-known music identification method, and implement this system in the form of a neural net. We then attack this system using simple gradient methods. Adversarial music created this way successfully fools industrial systems, including the AudioTag copyright detector and YouTube's Content ID system. Our goal is to raise awareness of the threats posed by adversarial examples in this space, and to highlight the importance of hardening copyright detection systems to attacks.