A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be used for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
