An activist organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their models.
An entity known as 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, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
