An activist organization has stated to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for data to train their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally 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 Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting 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.
