An activist organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
