Spotify and Major Labels Win $322M in Music Piracy Lawsuit – Billboard

At least for now, the court judgment is largely a symbolic victory, as no one has identified the anonymous internet users behind Anna’s Archive. The Spotify company logo is displayed as traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) during morning trading on February 01, 2023 in New York City. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images Trending on Billboard Spotify and the three major label groups have been awarded a nine-figure copyright judgment against the pirate library Anna’s Archive — though at least for now, the victory is largely symbolic as the site is anonymously operated. A federal judge entered default judgment on Tuesday (April 14) against Anna’s Archive, which announced in a blog post this past December that it had scraped 86 million songs from Spotify and planned to distribute them via a series of bulk torrents. Spotify teamed up with Universal Music Group (UMG), Warner Music Group (WMG) and Sony to sue the site’s shadowy operators for this “brazen theft” in January. Related Judge Jed S. Rakoff granted an immediate restraining order that barred Anna’s Archive from distributing the stolen songs, but the site’s operators never responded to the lawsuit. Undeterred, they released torrents in February
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