A digital rights group has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their models.
A group called 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 carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
