Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Spotify and record labels quietly sued Anna’s Archive, the shadow library that claimed to have scraped 300TB of Spotify’s most-played tracks.
- Anna’s Archive was not even notified of the lawsuit until one of its primary domains was taken down from the internet.
- However, taking down a few domains hasn’t stopped Anna’s Archive. Like Hydra, the platform appears to regenerate as quickly as one of it’s somains is cut back.
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As first reported by Ars Technica, Spotify, along with major record labels Sony, Warner, and Universal Music Group, filed a silent lawsuit against Anna’s Archive in late December. The case was sealed, allowing the companies to act before the site even knew what was happening.
On January 2, a US judge granted a temporary restraining order that forced key internet infrastructure providers to cut off Anna’s Archive. That included the Public Interest Registry, which runs .org domains, and Cloudflare, which the site relied on to stay online. The result was that Anna’s Archive’s .org domain went dark before the site owners were even notified.
The music companies had argued that tipping off Anna’s Archive earlier would have caused it to immediately release 300TB worth of scraped music from Spotify and move its infrastructure outside the US.
The request from Spotify and the record labels was worded as follows:
If Anna’s Archive receives notice that the Record Company Plaintiffs are seeking this temporary restraining order, it will almost certainly release the sound recordings that it has illegally copied from Spotify to the public immediately and activate contingency plans to relocate its infrastructure outside of the United States. To prevent this, Plaintiffs have filed their Complaint under seal, and the Record Company Plaintiffs now ask the Court to issue its temporary restraining order on an ex parte basis, so that Anna’s Archive cannot preemptively frustrate the very relief sought by the Record Company Plaintiffs’ motion.
Spotify argued in the lawsuit that Anna’s Archive illegally accessed its audio by circumventing DRM. A judge later granted a preliminary injunction, saying the companies were likely to succeed in proving copyright infringement and ordering domain registrars, hosts, and ISPs worldwide to block access and stop supporting the site.
However, taking down a few domains hasn’t stopped Anna’s Archive. Much like Hydra, the platform appears to regenerate as quickly as one of it’s domains is cut back. Some domains registered outside of the US are still reachable, and even though the site owners have acknowledged ongoing takedowns, they recently noted in a Reddit post that they have “plenty of other domains” available. Their post also encouraged users to check the Wikipedia page for Anna’s Archive to find updated links, thanking supporters for their “support and encouragement” as domains continue to disappear.
That said, there are signs that Anna’s Archive has started to pull back on distributing Spotify’s scraped data. TorrentFreak spotted a recent change on the site’s Spotify section, which now reads “Unavailable until further notice.” The page previously linked to three torrent files covering Spotify metadata, audio analysis, and cover art.
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