A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for data to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
