🔗 Share this article Activist Collective Asserts to Have Scraped Countless of Music Files from the Streaming Giant A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them publicly. Possible Impetus for AI Training Observers noted the apparent data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms 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 leak did not represent its full inventory. “We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson. The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable methods to bypass DRM protections. Group's Declared Goal and Worries Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote 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 listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, 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 purpose as “preserving humanity’s information and culture”. Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ rights, remarked the leaked music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems. “Training on pirated material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated. The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its AI models. A founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in principle “build their own private free version of the service”. He added it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on modern music at scale”. Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other. Government Considerations and Reactions In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the idea has supported artists’ concerns. The secretary of state for technology, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.