An activist organization has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the music 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.
“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 “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
