An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Observers said the seeming leak could aid AI companies searching for data to train their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify 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 copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging 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 mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
