An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for material to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service 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, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of the service”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
