An activist organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts said the apparent data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method 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,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
