A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering 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 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 start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
