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An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them online.

Possible Boost for AI Training

Observers noted the seeming data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their models.

An entity known as Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its full catalog.

“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.

The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorised access identified a external actor scraped public metadata and used illicit methods to circumvent DRM [digital rights management].

Group's Declared Goal and Worries

Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.

The group claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online.

“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its mission as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”.

Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate

Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for training AI models.

“Training on pirated material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used instructing AI models,” he said.

The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models.

The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “create their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at a large volume”.

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

Government Considerations and Reactions

In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.

The secretary of state for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.