An activist group has stated to have scraped a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company representative.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training 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 develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of the service”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research 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 regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
