A digital rights group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for data to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, 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,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models 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 Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
