An activist group has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers said the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to develop their models.
An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
Spotify does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
