A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Observers said the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data 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 located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, innovation and technology 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 pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
