A digital rights group has stated to have scraped a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
