An activist organization has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of the service”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
