A digital rights organization has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers noted the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious 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 investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and development 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 committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
