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A digital rights group has stated to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online.

Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training

Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their technology.

A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.

“We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” said a Spotify representative.

The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].

Archive's Declared Goal and Worries

Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.

They claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.

“Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.

Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground

Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems.

“Training on pirated material is unfortunately widespread 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 pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its AI models.

The co-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 Spotify”. The executive said it could also enable tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at a large volume”.

Copyright has emerged as a battleground between artists, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.

Government Considerations and Reactions

Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a government proposal to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.

A government minister for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by March 2025.