An activist organization has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Potential Impetus for AI Training
Observers said the apparent leak could boost AI companies searching for material to train their technology.
An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Worries
Spotify does not believe 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 represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is sadly common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own personal free version of Spotify”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a key issue between artists, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, 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 backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
