An activist organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers said the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group'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 recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
