An activist organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
