An activist organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid AI companies searching for data to develop their models.
A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Stated Mission and Concerns
The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, said 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 listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Of course 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 “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would probably be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its systems.
A founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
