Advocacy Collective Claims to Have Scraped Countless of Music Files from the Streaming Giant
An activist organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for data to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
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 systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
