An activist organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist 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 company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository 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 posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
