A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified 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 audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
