Advocacy Group Asserts to Have Scraped Countless of Music Files from Spotify
A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak 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 rows of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately common 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 LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
