A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would likely be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of the service”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting 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.
