Collecting money from the anonymous entities behind Anna’s Archive will be the main challenge.
Spotify and the three major labels have secured a $322 million default judgment against Anna’s Archive, an open-source library and pirate activist group that aimed to release millions of music files from Spotify’s platform.
The judgment follows the non-response from Anna’s Archive’s operator to a lawsuit filed by Spotify, Universal Music Group (UMG), Warner Music Group (WMG), and Sony Music. Filed publicly in January, the lawsuit was a reaction to Anna’s Archive’s December announcement about scraping 86 million songs from Spotify for a “preservation archive” using BitTorrent to distribute the files.
Spotify and Co. described Anna’s Archive’s actions as the theft of millions of files with many commercial sound recordings. Despite facing legal consequences, the shadow library released torrents for almost three million music files in February.
Judge Jed Rakoff of the Southern District of New York awarded Spotify $300 million in damages and UMG, WMG, and Sony Music $22.2 million collectively, with a ruling that includes a permanent injunction for internet service providers to block Anna’s Archive and for the library to destroy all files taken from Spotify.
However, enforcing these orders poses challenges since the entities behind Anna’s Archive remain unknown. As noted by Billboard, Anna’s Archive has previously relaunched using new domain names to avoid being shut down.