An activist group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for material to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly 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 principle “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
