A digital rights organization has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training
Observers noted the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.
An entity 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 songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.
Group's Stated Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released 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 accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large digital files online.
“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he stated.
The Anna’s Archive site alludes to a large online archive, a huge online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems.
The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Considerations and Responses
In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.
The secretary of state for science, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
