A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be utilized for developing AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of the service”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a key issue between artists, 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 proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
