Advocacy Group Asserts to Have Extracted Countless of Music Tracks from Spotify
A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted 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 digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
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 “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.