A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for data to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared 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 recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course 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 knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
