Advocacy Group Asserts to Have Scraped Millions of Music Files from Spotify
A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers said the apparent data breach could aid AI companies searching for data to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of the service”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
