Advocacy Collective Claims to Have Scraped Countless of Music Files from the Streaming Giant
A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data 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 describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website 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.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of Spotify”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
