An activist organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could boost AI companies looking for data to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“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, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of the service”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state 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 right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
