An activist group has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers said the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
