A digital rights group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers noted the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their models.
A group 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 carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify 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, 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 Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of the service”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation 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 committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
