An activist organization has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a huge online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
