An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
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, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of the service”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
