Activist Group Claims to Have Extracted Millions of Music Files from the Streaming Giant
An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid AI companies looking for data to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public 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 streamed to by Spotify users 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,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
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 version of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting 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.
