A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers noted the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio taken 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 ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing 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 frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
