An activist group has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of the service”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister 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 correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
