An activist group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could boost AI companies searching for material to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, 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,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
