An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for material to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of the service”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
