A digital rights group has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, 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 purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
