A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Observers said the seeming leak could aid AI companies searching for data to train their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained 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 Worries
Spotify does not believe the music acquired 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 ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
