An activist group has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated 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 offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been used by Meta to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear 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.
