Activist Group Claims to Have Scraped Countless of Music Tracks from Spotify
A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost AI companies looking for data to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear 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.
