A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the seeming leak could boost AI companies searching for material to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared 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 known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of the service”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little 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.
