Advocacy Group Claims to Have Extracted Countless of Music Tracks from the Streaming Giant
A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of Spotify”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
