A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers noted the apparent leak could aid AI companies searching for material to develop their models.
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. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive 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 wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
