A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta 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 private free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
