Activist Collective Claims to Have Extracted Millions of Audio Files from Spotify
An activist organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries 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 engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain 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 Meta to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
