A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Observers said the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies 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 tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
