An activist group has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Observers noted the seeming leak could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled 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, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Stated Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
