Activist Collective Claims to Have Scraped Millions of Music Files from the Streaming Giant
An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
