A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent leak could boost AI companies searching for data to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, 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 correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
