A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for material to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared 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 start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of Spotify”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “little 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.
