An activist group has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers said the seeming data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio taken 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.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast 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 wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of the service”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
