An activist group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing 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 sharing large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
