Advocacy Collective Asserts to Have Extracted Countless of Music Tracks from the Streaming Giant
A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers said the apparent data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly 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 alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
