An activist organization has claimed to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers noted the apparent leak could boost AI companies searching for data to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, 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 Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used 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 personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development told 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 policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
