A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music taken 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.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data 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 “safeguarding 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 training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of the service”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
