An activist organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata 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 located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used 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 develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of the service”. He said it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants 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 permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
