A digital rights group has stated to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Observers said the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their technology.
A group called 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 hosts 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 were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of the service”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
