A digital rights organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers said the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital 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 describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, 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.
