An activist group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers noted the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be utilized for developing AI models.
“Educating models on pirated material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, writers 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 proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
