An activist organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.
Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Observers said the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their models.
A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full catalog.
“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM protections.
Group's Stated Goal and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They claimed the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.
AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Educating models on pirated material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its AI models.
A founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.
A government minister for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear 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.
