🔗 Share this article Activist Collective Claims to Have Scraped Millions of Audio Files from Spotify A digital rights organization has stated to have scraped a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly. Possible Impetus for AI Training Industry experts noted the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for data to train their technology. An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its full inventory. “We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson. The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM protections. Archive's Declared Mission and Concerns The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music. They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large data files online. “Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “preserving humanity’s information and heritage”. AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be used for training artificial intelligence systems. “Educating models on illegally sourced material is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he said. The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged 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 theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”. Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, writers and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other. Government Considerations and Reactions In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a government proposal to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions. A government minister for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.