An activist organization has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
