A digital rights group has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the seeming leak could boost AI companies searching for data to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission 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 accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
