A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them online.
Possible Impetus for AI Development
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and used questionable methods to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for developing AI models.
“Training on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of Spotify”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
