An activist organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their models.
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 carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated 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 providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, 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 start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of Spotify”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, 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.
