A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could boost AI companies searching for material to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting 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.
