An activist organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio 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 sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated 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 LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research 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 committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
