🔗 Share this article Activist Group Asserts to Have Scraped Countless of Music Tracks from Spotify An activist group has stated to have scraped a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them online. Potential Impetus for Artificial Intelligence Training Industry experts said the seeming data breach could aid AI companies looking for material to train their technology. A group called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire inventory. “We have identified and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative. The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management]. Archive's Stated Goal and Worries Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘historical repository’ for music. The group asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of sharing large digital 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 frames its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information 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 data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used training AI models,” he stated. The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models. A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”. Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other. Policy Proposals and Reactions In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ concerns. A government minister for science, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting 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.