A digital rights group has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers said the seeming leak could boost AI companies looking for material to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
