An activist organization has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music taken 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.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, 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 administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
