A digital rights group has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio 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 ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course 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 Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be utilized for developing AI models.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
