A digital rights group has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Observers said the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote 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 Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
