An activist group has stated to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Observers noted the apparent data breach could aid AI companies searching for data to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
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 copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
