A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public 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 claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
A government minister for technology, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
