A digital rights organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid AI companies searching for data to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
