A digital rights group has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers noted the apparent leak could boost AI companies searching for data to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public 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 listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, 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 artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
