A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid AI companies searching for data to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing 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 describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
