A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Training
Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid AI companies looking for data to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire catalog.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access found a external actor scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Archive's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing 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 streamed to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large data files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on pirated material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network 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 scale”.
Copyright has become a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for technology, research and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.
