A digital rights organization has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.
Potential Boost for AI Training
Industry experts said the apparent leak could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing 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 streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, 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 frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for developing AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references 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 wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free version of the service”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, research and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
