A digital rights group has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers said the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known 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 represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large data files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Educating models on pirated data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of the service”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.
