Advocacy Group Asserts to Have Extracted Millions of Audio Files from Spotify
An activist organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the seeming leak could boost AI companies searching for material to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music acquired 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 ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly 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 members of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of the service”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding 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.