A digital rights group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
