A digital rights organization 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 seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for material to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
