A digital rights organization has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for data to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of the service”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development informed 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 regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
