A digital rights group has stated to have scraped a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Development
Observers said the seeming leak could boost AI companies looking for material to train their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
