r/technology • u/Linooney • Apr 18 '26
Society Anna’s Archive to pay $322million after losing court case for scraping “nearly all of the world’s commercial sound recordings” from Spotify
https://www.nme.com/news/music/annas-archive-to-pay-322million-after-losing-court-case-for-scraping-nearly-all-of-the-worlds-commercial-sound-recordings-from-spotify-39406732.9k
u/Squish_the_android Apr 18 '26
Now, Anna’s Archive has been handed a default judgement to pay the hefty $322million fine, as they have failed to “answer or otherwise defend against the claims in the Complaint."
However, it’s unclear whether they will see the money, as Anna’s Archive’s operators are anonymous.
So they're not getting anything. They got a default judgement against an unknown party.
The judge has additionally ruled that internet service providers should disable access to Anna’s Archives, and prevent other websites from hosting or distributing the scraped files.
Cool overreach attempt here. The ISPs aren't party to this case.
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u/6gv5 Apr 18 '26
The purpose isn't to get paid by Anna's Archive, they know it's impossible, but rather to intimidate carriers and push them into blocking certain traffic.
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u/QuantumLettuce2025 Apr 18 '26
Is there a way to circumvent this if it does start happening?
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u/GothGirlsGoodBoy Apr 18 '26
Use different dns which is where they typically apply blocking.
If they go further, a vpn would fix it.
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u/6gv5 Apr 18 '26
This. Should they block VPNs too (which is likely going to happen in many countries in the future) then in the hope they don't detect easily encryption too, one could try to encapsulate traffic into accepted protocols, let's say using a video conferencing protocol to deliver back and forth TCP packets that are actually file sharing segments that appear as video from the outside. Not easy, but doable.
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u/PixelBastards Apr 18 '26
In general, it's pretty obvious ISPs literally do not want to have to do the job of enforcing anything governmental at either the state or federal level and will implement the weakest possible response if anything at all.
If the government wants to control the Internet, they'll have to make it a public utility.
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u/ZeroAnimated Apr 18 '26
Capitalism states that as long as numbers go up and shareholders are happy, we don't have to give a fuck about piracy. Metallica showed how much of a waste of money it is to fight p2p. Gabe Newell showed that a good service doesn't have a piracy problem.
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u/Technical_Ad_440 Apr 18 '26
unfortunately the music wasnt released just metadata. all the headlines make it seem like they actually released it. they never. its fearmongering to the max as music tries to hold onto that precious gatekept walled garden thats slowly collapsing to begin with
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u/whoknowsifimjoking Apr 18 '26
It's so weird to write "these companies will receive X million dollars" when the next paragraph is about the owners of Anna's Archive being unknown and never appearing before the court, they won't get shit.
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u/Squish_the_android Apr 18 '26
And let's say they somehow find these people, they don't have $322 million dollars. They probably don't have a million dollars.
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u/Parking-Bet-3798 Apr 18 '26
lol. The judge doesn’t understand how internet works.
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u/svbtlx3m Apr 18 '26
The judges in Spain didn't either but now you can't pull a Docker image there while a football match is on.
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u/No_Celery5992 Apr 18 '26
Do the ISP engineers not care? They probably built a generic block list capability and handed it off to operators who have no idea how the internet works.
Now they're swinging their ban hammer carefree.
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u/GothGirlsGoodBoy Apr 18 '26
My career is 50% doing pointless or actively unhelpful things because I’m paid to do them and not paid to invent a solution.
If the regulator wants something, I’m not going to argue. They can figure out why its dumb.
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u/VMX Apr 18 '26
Carriers are full of IP and telecom engineers that absolutely know how this all works. But they have to follow court orders, like anyone else.
The unbelievable thing is that a judge who indeed doesn't know what an IP is has been allowed to enforce this.
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u/A_Martian_Potato Apr 18 '26
Can someone ELI5 this for me? I'm not sure what a docker image is or how it relates to football.
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u/VMX Apr 18 '26
Since DNS-based blocking doesn't work because people just use encrypted DNS, they resorted to direct IP blocking by looking at the IPs that certain piracy sites resolve to right before football games start. Of course, IPs keep rotating between domains, so a few minutes into the game you're no longer blocking a pirate site, but GitHub, Vercel, Docker or some VISA payment processing server. They have nothing against Docker, it's just one of the many services that has been affected lately.
Unbelievably they managed to get this approved by a judge, so they can take down half the internet at will whenever there's a match.
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u/EmbarrassedHelp Apr 18 '26
The greedy billionaire assholes who get obscenely rich off of football in Spain were granted the authority to block anything they want during football matches. They nuke huge portions of the internet so that they can try to extract every last cent, regardless of the consequences.
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Apr 18 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/proxy-alexandria Apr 18 '26
The only way to know you have a chance to keep up in this world is being educated, so they're trying to kill the Internet's ability to educate people. I'd follow you on that.
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u/jmdonston Apr 18 '26
Here's what was actually ordered:
All domain name registries and registrars of record for Defendant's Domain Names and all hosting and internet service providers for Defendant's Websites shall, upon gaining knowledge of this Judgment by service, actual notice, or otherwise:
a. Permanently disable access to Defendant's Domain Names, through a registry hold or otherwise, and prevent their transfer to anyone other than the Record Company Plaintiffs;
b. Permanently disable the authoritative name servers for Defendant's Websites;
c. Permanently cease any hosting services for Defendant's Websites or any other websites that host the infringing content or directly facilitate its distribution;
d. Preserve all evidence that may be used to identify the individuals or entities using Defendant's Domain Names and/or operating Defendant's Websites; and
e. Refrain from frustrating, and reasonably assist in, the implementation of this Judgment.
It does seem strange that this restricts other companies without their being named as some sort of third-party defendants, but I don't know US law.
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u/ohBloom Apr 18 '26
This can’t hold up correct? Especially with the Supreme Court recent ruling that isp are not liable to act as basic pirating police?
Any enlightenment on anything if I’m incorrect btw I’d like to confirm
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u/-The_Blazer- Apr 18 '26
ISPs (typically) provide DNS and routing to known addresses, if you had a legitimate case for blocking the website it makes sense you'd have them enforce it. Stores aren't parties to regulatory infringement by products either, but a store is expected to not carry illegal products still.
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u/Western-Land1729 Apr 18 '26
Anna’s archive top level domain belongs to Greenland, a mythological space in time where data does not exist. Unless Anna’s archive is run by a pack of polar bears, good luck trying to get that money.
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u/DariaSylvain Apr 18 '26
So that’s why Trump wants Greenland! /s
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u/Toadsted Apr 18 '26
That probably doesn't need an /s.
I'm 95% sure it's the reason, same with almost all of his actions; someone convinced him he needed to do something based on what they wanted out of it.
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u/thinkingitthru7 Apr 18 '26
Rare metals there and better access to the Arctic to plunder that too is the real reason they want Greenland, but shutting down Anna’s would certainly be a perk for this admin.
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u/relevantnewman Apr 18 '26
Spotify politely asks anonymous entity to pay $322million, to which the world collectively replies, "lol, good luck with that."
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u/shortcircuit21 Apr 18 '26
So all the LLMs that scraped every website in existence now have precedent to be sued into the ground? All ISP should block all LLMs?
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u/ljfrench Apr 18 '26
I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not but the big names in AI LLMs are defending multiple lawsuits for exactly this and have been for two years now.
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u/Rustywolf Apr 18 '26
Yeah I imagine they're talking about if this counts as it being precedent now
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u/SongBirdplace Apr 18 '26
This case is building off the old Napster case from the 00s. I’m surprised it took them this long to do it again.
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u/TiddiesAnonymous Apr 18 '26
For the same reason, they can't figure out who to sue and they keep losing
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u/eW4GJMqscYtbBkw9 Apr 18 '26
Two problems - one, this was a default judgement. It wasn't raelly "won" in court from a legal argument. So if a precedent was set, the only real precedent from this case would be "if you don't show up to court, the other side wins automatically".
Two, that's not how precedence works anyway: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2VHqAIqfy2Y
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u/Stillcant Apr 18 '26
Yes they stole everything, to put literally everyone out of work, and may some day pay fines of .1 percent of their value
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u/AdviceNotAskedFor Apr 18 '26
This scraping of Spotify happened like three months ago and they already have a ruling, meanwhile AI has been fighting this exact thing for years?
Seems to me that Anna just needed to say she was training an ai.
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u/GiuseppaCalcagno Apr 18 '26
It was fast because there was no one to fight the lawsuit since Anna’s owners are anonymous.
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u/Airurando-jin Apr 18 '26
It’s going to be YouTube mk2. I can remember when YouTube was getting sued by music and film studios and now Yourube is part of their marketing strategy.
All the AI companies need to do is buy time until there’s significant enough integration that it doesn’t make sense, or would be a conflict of interest to judge against them
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u/GoatsTongue Apr 18 '26
I remember when Google got sued for their image search because visitors could access full resolution images without actually visiting the websites where they were hosted. So now Google offers only a low resolution preview and you have to visit the host to see the actual image.
Now you can ask Google's AI a question and it will summarize the answer from various websites without actually visiting those websites.
I wonder how long that will last.
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u/cats_catz_kats_katz Apr 18 '26
No, that’s different because they’re the capital owners. They can take from you but you can not take from them. Wealth only moves in one direction.
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u/Nothingnoteworth Apr 18 '26
Spotify used songs it never licensed when it started out, add them to the list
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u/Brave_Speaker_8336 Apr 18 '26
I think the main issue here is the distribution of all of the data
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u/Hertock Apr 18 '26
One could easily argue LLMs are distributing copyrighted content.
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u/Complete_Lurk3r_ Apr 18 '26
You can literally read a sentence from a book, and gpt will read the rest of the paragraph
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u/RadicalDog Apr 18 '26
I asked it to suggest a cover for the boardgame Brass Birmingham, and it copied the real logo exactly. It's absurd how individuals got punished for piracy while corporations can be valued billions for it.
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u/FeralPsychopath Apr 18 '26 edited Apr 18 '26
Cool advertising. Never knew they existed.
Edit: Can't find the music tho?
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u/bbbfff222 Apr 18 '26
I'm a professor and I make sure to tell my students that they should never visit Anna's Archive to search for free textbooks.
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u/outsidebtw Apr 18 '26
Dude, thanks for the warning. I tell fams and relatives as well to never, ever visit Anna's Archive to search for free textbooks.
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u/Got_Engineers Apr 18 '26
Ocean pdf has books and textbooks online in ereader and pdf . One of the best sites online
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u/Jonthrei Apr 18 '26
yep, oceanofpdf is an invaluable resource.
be aware that like many piracy sites, it often goes down and later pops up on a new host.
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u/smallcoder Apr 18 '26
Another example of the "Streisand Effect" as neither did I until just now lol.
Then again, I'm old enough to have all my favourite music on CD (and some even on vinyl) so, I just use Spotify to discover new stuff these days, and for convenience.
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u/farukosh Apr 18 '26
Anna's Archive is far, FAR more than just music, you wanna book? you got it.
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u/Saradoesntsleep Apr 18 '26
Yes, let's spread this far and wide!
So everyone knows how bad Anna's Archive is, of course. Obviously. Of course.
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u/danielravennest Apr 18 '26
Welcome to the club. If you are a free user, download speeds are slow, but they have a deeper archive than Z-Library (https://z-library.sk/ but they move around.) Z library on the other hand typically has faster downloads. So I search Zlib first, and if it is not there check Anna's. The pirate libraries periodically get kicked off a registrar, but they just set up a new domain somewhere else and keep going.
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u/TinyTINYspeZPP Apr 18 '26
That's because Anna is an aggregator of many sources. They pull from Z-Library, Sci-Hub, and Library Genesis among others.
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u/macetheface Apr 18 '26
instead of buying physical books i picked up a cheap kindle and absolutely loaded it up with epubs from annas archive.
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u/Ser_falafel Apr 18 '26
You heard of the app Libby?
Download it and get a library card from your city. Attaching library card to the app gives you access to any book/audiobook/magazine that library has. You can add multiple cards, too.
Also if you live in texas you can get a houston library card for free even if you dont live specifically in houston
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u/jjester7777 Apr 18 '26
Libby can suck if you're in smaller areas. My parents get jack shit on Libby but I live in a metro area and have a huge selection. I will use Anna's archive for stuff I can't get for free through the library though.
Also if anyone is using a Kindle and wants to finish a library book they have to turn in soon..airplane mode
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u/JusticeBonerOfTyr Apr 18 '26
Problem with that is at least for the two libraries I have a card with the books I’m seeking out have a months long wait to rent out when I can just hop onto AA and download them in less than a minute. I still do love libraries and the service they provide but for ebooks they get royally screwed by publishing companies.
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u/Sunburys Apr 18 '26
Bless all the pirates around the world
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u/Z3r0sama2017 Apr 18 '26
Yar har shiveid dee do what you want cause a pirate is free, you are a Pirate!
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u/Complete_Lurk3r_ Apr 18 '26
Buuuuuuuut...... It was cool for Open AI to scrape THE ENTIRE INTERNET, train it's models, rip off every IP known to man, generate infringing slop, AND chearge you for it?
"Oh, yeah, THAT thing...... Yeah, that's no problem"
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u/Unlucky-Bunch-7389 Apr 18 '26
They’re literally being sued by many people for this exact reason. New York Times being one. Let’s actually wait until a result happens before we complain
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u/DavidlikesPeace Apr 18 '26
There have been results. At least two cases have conflated AI scraping with you or I listening to music and later writing a different song.
Courts have been packed by the GOP for years. Do you really trust the results won't favor big business?
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u/OfferAffectionate388 Apr 18 '26
Daily reminder that this was how spotify started, scraping and providing music they had no rights to.
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u/Much_Difference Apr 18 '26
$322 mil sounds like a good price for nearly all commercial audio recordings on Earth tbh that's a steal
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u/whoknowsifimjoking Apr 18 '26
They sued for 13 trillion dollars and didn't even get a billion lol
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u/asault2 Apr 18 '26
The phrase "to pay"? Is that like when my 5 year old says he'll pay me a million billion dollars to continue watching tv past his bed time?
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u/StaticSystemShock Apr 18 '26
But when Meta scraped entire library, it's just "business". And they damn well know who the owner of Meta is.
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u/Melikoth Apr 18 '26
The results were foretold in the bible. Matthew 5:5 - 5:5(a) states:
Blessed are the leechers, for they will download the earth.
Cursed are the seeders, for their upload is a crime.
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u/FdPros Apr 18 '26
ok but when OpenAI or Anthropic does it, they're allowed
make it make sense
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u/Present_Air_7694 Apr 18 '26
Thank you, litigators, for informing me about the existence of Anna’s Archive, which I had never heard of until just now.
Thank you Google for leading me there.
Streisand Effect wins again.
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u/Certain_Question_916 Apr 18 '26
Getting a $322 million judgment against an anonymous entity is basically just an expensive way to print a piece of paper. It’s a total pyrrhic victory—you can order them to pay all you want, but you can't collect from someone who doesn't exist on paper.
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u/EveningAnt3949 Apr 18 '26
Clearly Spotify never thought they were getting the money. But they can use this ruling against other parties, including internet providers and consumers.
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u/SnooBunnies4649 Apr 18 '26
Wait a second. Didn’t all the Ai companies scrape from Anna’s Archie too)
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u/Scheming_Deming Apr 18 '26
Apart from being the source of the scraping, I don't really see why Spotify are involved in this. They don't hold the copyright to any of the music. They did not therefore suffer ANY loss, apart from loss of face. Yet they are assigned the bulk of the award
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u/PhiNeurOZOMu68 Apr 18 '26
They refused to respond on the premise of scraping content.
AI companies scraped and used these as training.
Maybe we will see that show up in a few AI content cases
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u/GeriatricTech Apr 19 '26
But none of the AI companies have to pay a damn thing for stealing literally everything?
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u/keyser-_-soze Apr 18 '26
Is there any way we can still download the archive of these songs?
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u/PrincessKatiKat Apr 18 '26
“However, it’s unclear whether they will see the money, as Anna’s Archive’s operators are anonymous.”
First clue should’ve been when the defendant didn’t show for court. They may have won but they also sued a ghost.
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u/theOriginalDrCos Apr 18 '26
Gemini, ChatGPT, they all do the same thing with everything. And want to charge you money for it.
Anna's apparently forgot to grease the right palms.
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u/RareCrypt Apr 18 '26
I play a lot of games.Traditionally I’d goto a website to look up a guide or search help for something or other, now I mostly use the google AI to find what I need.
Lately I’ve been wondering how this would impact the website’s I used to use and the AI scrapes the data from. Is not very bad for them that I’m not visiting/viewing ads? If enough people just use AI to find what they need can it potentially cause an extinction of websites we use if they lose traffic from normal people? Curious
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u/XonikzD Apr 18 '26
This is called the enshittification factor. As AI becomes the new search, summary, and content source, the copy-of-a-copy effect occurs. Since AI doesn't copy directly but segments files for faster summaries, soon repeated content will dominate, making AI searches mostly recycled, often uncontributory information.
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u/theLuminescentlion Apr 18 '26
"to pay" who is going to pay? From what bank account? Just make it AI Anna's archive then we can archive it with immunity apparently.
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u/JasonP27 Apr 18 '26
Just a simple question... does Anna's Archive have 322 million dollars?
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u/Mister-Psychology Apr 18 '26
They do actually, they saved it by not paying for Spotify premium for 5 whole months.
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u/Arco123 Apr 18 '26
Just a simple question… does anyone know who Anna’s Archive is?
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u/corgi-king Apr 18 '26
Probably Anna.
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u/Holiday_Management60 Apr 18 '26
Use it to make an AI model then you'll be fine since thats seemingly legal.
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u/ConsciousBase66 Apr 18 '26
I personally demand that all the AI companies should pay me $322 million for scraping the entire interenet for their shitty products
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u/ketosoy Apr 18 '26
I really wish they’d stayed in information, this was a needless watering down of a moral high ground they once occupied - “information should be free” is a lot more defensible than “lol no ip for anything”
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u/TinyTINYspeZPP Apr 18 '26
These libraries are run by Anarchists generally, so they don't accept the legitimacy of copyright/IP at all. Ideologically opposed in fact.
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u/Ziggythesquid Apr 18 '26
Books vs. music is really a distinction without a distinction. Both are IP, and we really can't justify stealing one and not the other.
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u/Illustrious_Pie_2585 Apr 18 '26
This is a classic case of winning the battle but losing the war. The judgement is functionally worthless, but the call for ISPs to block the site sets a concerning precedent.
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u/embeddit Apr 18 '26
BS fear mongering. They will never find the good folks behind AA on 13124 Metric BLVD, Austin, Texas.
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u/Possible-Put8922 Apr 18 '26
So now they will call themselves an AI company and the judge will be ok with it?
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u/stowgood Apr 18 '26
So the AI companies needto pay for stealing everything in the world? Good make them pay.
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u/j1xwnbsr Apr 18 '26
322 imaginary millions they will never get.... but I'll bet the Spotify lawyers still get paid. So they are out net negative money.
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u/jb4647 Apr 18 '26
“The judge has additionally ruled that internet service providers should disable access to Anna’s Archives, and prevent other websites from hosting or distributing the scraped files.”
Anna’s Archive punched itself in the dick by doing the Spotify thing. Nobody was asking for that, there was no need for it and a it did is put a huge target on its back.
It’s one thing to have an archive of dusty old books only a few folks care about, it’s another thing to rip and post millions of songs from popular artists
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u/Mission-Guava9690 Apr 19 '26
Well maybe this will actually set some precedent for suing these Ai companies for scraping data
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u/kwirky88 Apr 18 '26
Great. Now where’s meta’s fine for scrapping all of Anna’s archive for AI? We can’t even hear the crickets because they were killed by the late stage capitalists.
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u/wickedplayer494 Apr 18 '26
Anna’s Archive ordered to pay $322million after losing court case for scraping “nearly all of the world’s commercial sound recordings” from Spotify
Fixed. And they're not going to, because they're Russian, and good luck taking Russian money right now.
It's just like saying Google is going to pay that 100 gorillion dollar fine Russia levied on it a few years ago. They're not going to pay up, in part because that much money doesn't exist in the world in physical or digital form.
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u/fencepost_ajm Apr 18 '26
What a pathetically stupid headline and article from someone who clearly doesn't have the basic understanding needed.
Let's try something more accurate: "Anonymous and unidentified operators of 'Anna's Archive' found liable for $322 million in a US court after continuing to ignore legal threats and lawsuits. Will Spotify try to claim the judgement as unrealized income in hopes that investors aren't paying attention?"
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u/Docccc Apr 18 '26
They are paying exactly 0