A digital rights group has stated to have scraped a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared 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 fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
