An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based 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 tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote 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 ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of the service”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a key issue 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 protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize 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, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
