A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data 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 artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Stated Goal and Concerns
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing 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 describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
