A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of the service”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
