Activist Collective Claims to Have Extracted Countless of Music Tracks from the Streaming Giant
An activist organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the seeming data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released 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.
They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing 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 frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
