An activist group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts noted the apparent leak could aid AI companies searching for material to train their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group claimed the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed 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 start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation 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 issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
