An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the apparent data breach could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio taken 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 ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
