A digital rights group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for data to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service 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 heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
