A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid AI companies searching for material to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music 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 ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files accounted for 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 great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
