A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Mission and Worries
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 copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the leaked music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
