An activist organization has claimed 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 noted the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for material to train their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of the service”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let 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.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
