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A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.

Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development

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

A group known as Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as performer and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million tracks, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire catalog.

“We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a company representative.

The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].

Group's Stated Mission and Worries

Spotify does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public 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 claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, 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 describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”.

Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate

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

“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.

The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to train its AI models.

The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on the professional network that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own personal free version of the service”. He added it could also allow technology firms to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.

Copyright has become a battleground between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.

Policy Considerations and Responses

Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.

A government minister for science, research and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.