A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for data to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
