A digital rights group has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Observers said the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak 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 Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public 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.
The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of the service”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government 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 owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting 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.
