🔗 Share this article Advocacy Group Asserts to Have Scraped Millions of Music Tracks from Spotify An activist group has stated to have harvested a vast number of tracks from the popular streaming service and is getting ready to release them publicly. Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Development Industry experts noted the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for data to train their technology. An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full inventory. “We have located and disabled 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, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access found a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management]. Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns The streaming service does not think the music taken 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 ‘historical repository’ for music. The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online. “Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”. Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for developing artificial intelligence systems. “Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is almost certain to end up training AI models,” he said. The group's website alludes to LibGen, a huge online repository of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to develop its systems. The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own personal free version of Spotify”. The executive added it could also enable tech companies to “train on modern music at scale”. Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other. Policy Considerations and Responses In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a government proposal to let AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the idea has backed artists’ concerns. A government minister for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.