A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Group'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 recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of the service”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
