A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers said the seeming leak could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio 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 ‘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 distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
