An activist group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify 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”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
