A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers said the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio taken 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 ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed 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 Meta to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of the service”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
