An activist group has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music 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 data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
