A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the seeming leak could boost AI companies looking for data to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify 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 culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be utilized for developing AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, 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.
