A digital rights group has stated to have harvested millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Possible Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers noted the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for data to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Stated Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music.
The group claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free version of the service”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Considerations and Reactions
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.
