A digital rights group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
