🔗 Share this article Activist Group Claims to Have Scraped Millions of Audio Tracks from Spotify A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly. Possible Boost for AI Development Industry experts said the seeming data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their models. A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million entries 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 identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative. The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM protections. Archive's Stated Goal and Worries Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said 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 ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of exchanging large digital files online. “Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”. Model Development and Copyright Battleground Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems. “Training on pirated material is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he stated. The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models. A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free version of the service”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”. Intellectual property law has become a battleground between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other. Policy Considerations and Responses Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns. A government minister for technology, innovation and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.