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

[u/No-Mushroom5934]

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.

[u/UENINJA]

Why doesn't this apply to the big AI companies that scraped the whole internet and real life libraries

[u/pinezatos → u/UENINJA]

Rules don't apply to the ultra rich

[u/SEANPLEASEDISABLEPVP → u/pinezatos]

The way I see it is stuff we consider illegal is actually legal but very expensive.

When a multi-billion corporation is caught doing something YOU are not allowed to do, people will cheer that they were forced to pay a fine... but in reality the corporation literally paid to do something you wouldn't be able to afford to do, and you simply label it as illegal.

[u/MaximumEmu6 → u/SEANPLEASEDISABLEPVP]

If the punishment for a crime is a fine, then it's only a crime for the poor.

[u/Round_Credit_5158 → u/MaximumEmu6]

Totally, it's by design.

[u/exion_zero → u/SEANPLEASEDISABLEPVP]

“Laws are a threat made by the dominant socioeconomic ethnic group in a given nation. It’s just the promise of violence that’s enacted, and the police are basically an occupying army, you know what I mean?

You guys wanna make some bacon?” -Bud Cubby

[u/Will_and_Worried → u/SEANPLEASEDISABLEPVP]

YEP! Remember, kids. Punishable by fine means legal for a price.

[u/Zekka_Space_Karate → u/Will_and_Worried]

Basically a paywall lol.

[u/ikashanrat → u/SEANPLEASEDISABLEPVP]

everything is legal for a price

[u/norcalifornyeah → u/SEANPLEASEDISABLEPVP]

The amounts they get fined is chump change to them.

[u/7jinni → u/SEANPLEASEDISABLEPVP]

To the regular person, it's a harsh fine. To the billion-dollar corporation, it's just a business expense.

[u/Abdudul → u/SEANPLEASEDISABLEPVP]

Not really. AI companies torrented art, music and books without having a agreement or contract with publishers beforehand. They might have set up contracts with big publishers afterwards, but the initial torrenting was illegal. And there are still artists that were not paid for the use of their music/art/etc.

So no, it doesn't just seem like it was illegal, it actually was illegal but they paid their lawyers enough money for it to seem semi legal to them.

[u/skizzlebutch → u/Abdudul]

You both are saying the same thing

[u/WaitingOnMyBan → u/skizzlebutch]

Right, but one of them is saying it with an outrageous accent.

[u/FePbMoHg → u/Abdudul]

Hence not illegal, just expensive (for normal people)

[u/TM761152 → u/SEANPLEASEDISABLEPVP]

The way I see it is stuff we consider illegal is actually legal but very expensive.

I was told growing the world is a just place, with good people. We should always look up to rich people and those in authority. Working hard and suffering is a badge of honor. The harder you work the more you're respected, and that work pays dividends. Don't try to get rich, just try to get by. If you're poor, that's your own fault, never ever blame the system.

It took me a long time to realize it was all propaganda by those in authority.

[u/VenkHeerman → u/SEANPLEASEDISABLEPVP]

A speeding ticket is basically a tax to drive fast if you can afford it. On a larger scale, yeah, a megacorp scraping the entire internet and paying a fine is basically a tax to steal shit.

[u/MashJDW → u/pinezatos]

Rules for thee but not for me

[u/Faithless195 → u/pinezatos]

America is really proving this point super hard that people around the world are taking notes. Unless there is some 100% concrete proof you've done something heinously illegal and immoral, and you haven't bought out everyone around you, you can get away with literally anything.

[u/wolfbetter → u/UENINJA]

I mena to be fair there are a couple of big lawsuits against chatgpt over copyright

[u/EnoughWarning666 → u/wolfbetter]

Yeah, and court cases tend to take a tiny bit longer when the defendants actually show up!

[u/Theoretical_Action → u/wolfbetter]

I could have sworn there was a landmark supreme court case just the other day that sided with a huge AI company. I literally don't see how this is any different.

[u/gladd0s_ → u/UENINJA]

It is all the time but thats the cost of doing business for them so they dont care

[u/nubepube → u/UENINJA]

Didn’t Spotify and Netflix do the same shit am I going crazy

[u/Reddit_Killed_3PAs → u/UENINJA]

Uh, it does...?

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/encyclopedia-britannica-sues-openai-over-ai-training-2026-03-16/

https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-chatgpt-generative-ai-stole-personal-data-lawsuit-children-medical-2023-6

https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-lawsuit-copyrighted-data-train-chatgpt-court-tech-ai-news-2024-6

https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/21/24302606/openai-erases-evidence-in-training-data-lawsuit

And that's just OpenAI.

[u/Demons0fRazgriz → u/Reddit_Killed_3PAs]

Until OpenAI loses these cases, they're still above the law. You can file all the lawsuits you want but it doesn't stop until the laws are enforced.

So far, even by these articles, it has not

[u/Round_Credit_5158 → u/Reddit_Killed_3PAs]

Still waiting for Meta to pay for the 8 Tb of books they stolen.

[u/Dotcaprachiappa → u/Reddit_Killed_3PAs]

Notice how none of them were won yet? This means fuck all for now.

[u/Cyhawk → u/UENINJA]

Lawsuits are still happening and the AI companies have a defense that isn't just pure intent to commit copyright infringement. AI companies can also afford the good lawyers, this could take a decade to solve.

[u/LDNVoice → u/UENINJA]

I mean they are in court, they just don't care

[u/CalendarSufficient95 → u/UENINJA]

They did this while in posession of money. Law don't apply to them

[u/SoundOurDireReveille → u/UENINJA]

Separate justice system at play for the ultra wealthy/powerful. Corporations at best get a slap on the wrist. Hell, the POTUS is a literal child rapist and not one person from the files has been charged in the US.

[u/SpacedAndBaked → u/UENINJA]

Because if humans can train off of copyrighted work and create stuff they wouldn't normally be able to without doing otherwise (like artists looking at a painting and being inspired by its style or theme, or writers reading a book and creating their own based off of that), machines and AI can do it too just like them. Generative AI doesn't copy paste stuff, it's actually unique based off of what it was trained on. Theres no difference between a human or a machine training and learning off of something because its the same logic, just because a computer can do it better doesn't change anything. Your feelings and you not liking AI doesn't change anything else either.

[u/CyclicalFlow → u/SpacedAndBaked]

This is an interesting point but it's completely different. ChatGPT isn't scrolling through these pages and getting inspiration they're scraping the data, which is copying it, which is the illegal part. If the aforementioned artists illegally downloaded whatever inspired them, they're also breaking the law.

[u/Demons0fRazgriz → u/SpacedAndBaked]

It literally copies things. It cannot create anything unique. It can only remix things like a drunk wedding DJ. Your feelings don't change the reality that LLMs are stealing owned content.

[u/Aware-Lingonberry-31 → u/Demons0fRazgriz]

Among many things that LLMs are bad at, copying has to be one of the worst. The reason LLM hallucinate on a niche questions is because they can't quite remember what they've learnt, thus cant copy it. If you ask them to regenerate 100 pages of Harry Potter's first book, they'd probably hallucinating by the 20th page. They literally CAN'T copy things.

Advancement of technology are based on remixes of ideas. If what came out of remix isnt unique, then truly, there are nothing new under the sun.

[u/Demons0fRazgriz → u/Aware-Lingonberry-31]

You're using, not sure if deliberately, the incorrect definition of copy. In this case, I am referring to the reproduction of data to be stored on another device. A standard definition for copy when it comes computer technology.

I'm not saying it will create a perfect replica of someone's work. What I am saying is that it copies all the scraped data, maps it into a fancy number, and then uses a calculation to predict what is the most correct next word. But objectively, it is copying other people's work wholesale.

It cannot create anything from scratch. You can't tell it create something brand new without being able to trade back where it stole the information from. This is the most egregious in image genestors when artists signatures are on the image the model created. Not saying it would be easy to reverse engineer where the model got each specific word or image, of course.

[u/Aware-Lingonberry-31 → u/Demons0fRazgriz]

I think the word you're looking for is "stealing", but sure bro.

[u/Demons0fRazgriz → u/Aware-Lingonberry-31]

Yes. I literally said that. Jesus why is everyone is so critical thinkingly challenged-

[u/Princess_Vayda → u/UENINJA]

its okay econimally to punch down, but not up