An activist group has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data 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 located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive'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 pirated books, wrote 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 distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models 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 group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
