A digital rights organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
