A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the seeming data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
