Activist Collective Asserts to Have Scraped Countless of Music Tracks from the Streaming Giant
A digital rights organization has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers noted the seeming data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
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 systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
