An activist organization has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Declared Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
