Advocacy Collective Claims to Have Extracted Countless of Audio Tracks from the Streaming Giant
An activist organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.
Potential Boost for AI Development
Observers noted the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Declared Goal and Concerns
The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, 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.
