An activist organization has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed 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 digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for training AI models.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models 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 Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
