A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio taken 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.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify 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”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up 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 leveraged by Meta to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
