A digital rights group has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost AI companies searching for data to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting 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.
