Advocacy Collective Claims to Have Extracted Countless of Audio Files from Spotify
A digital rights group has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Observers said the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
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.
“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
