An activist organization has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid AI companies searching for data to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired 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.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be utilized for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training 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 allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
