An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Observers noted 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 scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed 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 digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
