An activist organization has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers said the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “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”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government 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’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
