An activist organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means 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,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of the service”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, 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.
