An activist group has stated to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could boost AI companies searching for data to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service 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 pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of the service”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
