A digital rights group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid AI companies searching for data to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of the service”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
