An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
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 providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of the service”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
