A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to develop their technology.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service 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 pirated books, said 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 sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on pirated material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of Spotify”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
