Spotify wins $322M piracy case but pirates remain untraceable
What's the story
Spotify and three major record labels have won a default judgment of $322 million against Anna's Archive, an open-source library and pirate activist group. The group had planned to publicly release millions of music files scraped from Spotify's platform. The judgment was awarded after the unknown operator of Anna's Archive failed to respond to a lawsuit filed by Spotify, Universal Music Group (UMG), Warner Music Group (WMG), and Sony Music.
Controversy
Anna's Archive planned to release millions of songs on torrent
In December, Anna's Archive announced it had already ripped 86 million songs from Spotify and create a "preservation archive" for the music. The group intended to distribute these files via BitTorrent. In response, Spotify and the record labels filed a lawsuit against them in January. They accused Anna's Archive of "brazen theft of millions of files containing nearly all of the world's commercial sound recordings."
Defiance
Anna's Archive released torrents despite ongoing lawsuit
Despite the legal action, Anna's Archive went ahead and released torrents for nearly three million music files in February. The move was seen as a blatant disregard for the ongoing lawsuit. On Tuesday, Judge Jed Rakoff of the Southern District of New York issued a default judgment in favor of Spotify and the record labels.
Implementation hurdles
Judgment includes permanent injunction against Anna's Archive
The judgment awards Spotify $300 million in damages, while UMG, WMG, and Sony Music get a collective award of $22.2 million. The ruling also includes a permanent injunction requiring internet service providers to block the Anna's Archive website. It further orders the shadow library to destroy all copies of works scraped from Spotify. However, enforcing these demands could be difficult as those behind Anna's Archive are still unknown.