A digital rights organization has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts noted the seeming data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify 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”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create 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 become a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, 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 administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
