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 online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
