A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Observers noted the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for data to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, 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 describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, 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 AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of the service”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
