A digital rights group has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training 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 stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
