Advocacy Group Claims to Have Extracted Countless of Music Files from the Streaming Giant
An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated 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 copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be utilized for developing AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of Spotify”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
