An activist group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Observers noted the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the audio 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 claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
