Activist Collective Asserts to Have Extracted Millions of Audio Tracks from Spotify
An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
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, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development 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 regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
