A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged 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 principle “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
