Activist Collective Asserts to Have Extracted Countless of Music Tracks from the Streaming Giant
A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“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 subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ 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 ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging 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 purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of the service”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
