An activist organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based 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 Stated Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music 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.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data 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 culture”.
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 data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
