An activist group has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers noted the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be utilized for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to LibGen, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of Spotify”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
