A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for material to train 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 carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
