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A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.

Potential Impetus for AI Training

Observers noted the apparent leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their technology.

A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full catalog.

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

The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections.

Group's Declared Goal and Worries

Spotify does not believe 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, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.

The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.

“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and heritage”.

AI Training and Intellectual Property Battleground

A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the leaked music would probably be utilized for training AI models.

“Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.

The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.

A founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that members of the public could in principle “build their own personal free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also allow technology firms to “educate models 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.

Government Considerations and Reactions

Across Britain, artists and writers have protested against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions.

The secretary of state for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.