A digital rights group has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers noted the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission 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 copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology told 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 committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
