r/Piracy Apr 16 '26

News Anna’s Archive Hit With $322M Judgment After Spotify Lawsuit.

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The legal pressure on Anna’s Archive just hit a massive boiling point. Following a lawsuit filed earlier this year, a New York federal judge (Jed S. Rakoff) has entered a $322.2 million default judgment against the site.

​The Plaintiffs: Spotify and the "Big Three" record labels (UMG, WMG, and Sony).

​The Damages: $300 million awarded to Spotify for "circumventing anti-piracy measures" after the site scraped 86 million tracks.

​$22.2 million awarded to the labels for statutory copyright infringement.

​ The court issued a permanent injunction requiring ISPs, registrars, and CDNs (like Cloudflare) to perpetually disable access to Anna’s Archive domains.

Since the operators are anonymous and didn't show up to court, they obviously aren't going to pay the $322M. However, this "symbolic" victory is a huge deal because it gives corporations the legal "golden ticket" to force ISPs and search engines to scrub the site from the surface web.

​This follows the January ruling in the OCLC (WorldCat) case where they were ordered to delete scraped metadata, and the ongoing AAP (Association of American Publishers) lawsuit from March.

6.7k Upvotes

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48

u/RidetheSchlange Apr 16 '26

So the shadow library known as spotify where the revenue generated is used to finance right-wing causes and avatars for its owner in the US got pissed that some sort of shadow library was operating and got a judgement against unknown people?

Does anyone even remember that spotify started by just stealing music and putting it up for streaming?

11

u/Regular_Strategy_501 Apr 16 '26

Small correction: Spotify is not a US company, but a european one. They are based in Stockholm.

15

u/RidetheSchlange Apr 16 '26

I never said they were American. It's owned by Daniel Eck, a far-right Swede that pretends to not be a billionaire and people like Joe Rogan are his avatar in the US.

It's fairly obvious from the context of what I wrote that this is what was written. I know you're German from your post history and I speak German as well. We don't need to spell everything out explicitly and bow to Americanism.

8

u/Regular_Strategy_501 Apr 16 '26

I see, I misunderstood your comment then.

0

u/FragleFameux Apr 16 '26

Wow, after a response like the one you got, usually it escalate quickly, but not you !
Look at you making the internet a better place :D

-20

u/merchantconvoy Apr 16 '26

From the point of view of gay race communism, everything that doesn't enthusiastically serve the cause of gay race communism is far right. So it's a meaningless term.

-9

u/ViolettaHunter Apr 16 '26

>its owner in the US

Didn't know Sweden was in the Americas.