An activist organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking 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 leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed 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 exchanging 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 describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
