An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public 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 asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
