Grupo Anna’s Archives declared, in a post on its blog, that it carried out so-called scraping — automated data collection — of 86 million songs
Spotify reported on Monday (22) that it had disabled accounts associated with a group of activist hackers who claimed to have copied millions of music files and large volumes of metadata from the platform. The group Anna’s Archives declared, in a post on its blog, that it made the call scraping — automated data collection — from 86 million Spotify songs, plus metadata from 256 million tracks. According to the members, the objective would be to create an open “conservation archive” of music.
According to the group, the 86 million audio files would represent more than 99.6% of Spotify’s reproductions, while the metadata would correspond to 99.9% of the platform’s entire catalog. Spotify said the alleged breach does not affect users of the service. In theory, the data could be used to create a free music collection, but in practice, initiatives of this type tend to quickly be subject to legal action by copyright holders.
“We identify and disable accounts of malicious users involved in illegal scraping,” the company said. The company also said that it has adopted new security measures to prevent this type of attack and that it continuously monitors suspicious activity on the platform. “From day one, we have supported the artistic community in combating piracy and worked with industry partners to protect creators and defend their rights,” Spotify added.
*With information from AFP
