A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the apparent data breach could aid AI companies searching for material to train their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries 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 disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing 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 shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
