An activist organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported 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 hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be used for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of the service”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation 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 policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
