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A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to publish them online.

Possible Boost for AI Development

Observers noted the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.

A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, stated that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.

“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a Spotify spokesperson.

The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].

Archive's Declared Goal and Concerns

The streaming service does not believe 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 represented 99.6% of all music streamed 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,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.

AI Training and Copyright Debate

Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be used for training artificial intelligence systems.

“Training on pirated data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is almost certain to end up instructing AI models,” he stated.

The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.

The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. He said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”.

Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between artists, writers and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other.

Policy Proposals and Reactions

Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Almost every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions.

A government minister for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.