A digital rights group has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies looking for material to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of the service”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
