Anna’s Archive is generally known as a meta-search engine for shadow libraries, helping users find pirated books and other related resources.
However, last December, the site announced that it had also backed up Spotify, which came as a shock to the music industry.
Anna’s Archive initially released only Spotify metadata, and no actual music, but that put the music industry on high alert. Together with the likes of Universal, Warner, and Sony, Spotify filed a lawsuit days later, hoping to shut the site down.
Through a preliminary injunction targeting domain registrars and registries, the shadow library lost several domain names. However, not all were taken down, and the site registered various new domain names as backups.
The legal pressure also appeared to pay off in other ways. Not long after the lawsuit was filed, the shadow library removed the Spotify torrents. The same applies to the first batch of music files that was released in February.
According to a message posted on Reddit by the site’s operator, Anna’s Archivist, these Spotify releases were published accidentally and were put temporarily on hold because they are “not worth the additional trouble the music industry’s lawyers are bringing.”
‘Extremely Conservative’ $322 Million Default Judgment
Despite taking the torrents offline, Spotify and the labels are not letting the case go. On the contrary, without a response from Anna’s Archive in court, they seek a massive default judgment this week.
“Defendant’s blatant and willful disregard for Plaintiffs’ rights and the Court’s authority warrants imposition of statutory damages against Defendant for copyright infringement in the amount of $22,200,000, and for violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the amount of $300,000,000, as well as permanent injunctive relief,” they write.
| Plaintiff(s) | Damages Sought | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Warner | Statutory damages for willful copyright infringement (17 U.S.C. § 504(c)) at $150,000 for 48 sound recordings | $7,200,000.00 |
| Sony | Statutory damages for willful copyright infringement (17 U.S.C. § 504(c)) at $150,000 for 50 sound recordings | $7,500,000.00 |
| UMG | Statutory damages for willful copyright infringement (17 U.S.C. § 504(c)) at $150,000 for 50 sound recordings | $7,500,000.00 |
| Spotify | Statutory damages for circumvention of a technological measure (17 U.S.C. § 1203(c)(3)(A)) at $2,500 for 120,000 music files | $300,000,000.00 |
| Total | $322,200,000.00 | |
The music labels each seek the maximum of $150,000 in statutory damages for around 50 works. Spotify adds a DMCA circumvention claim of $2,500 for 120,000 music files, bringing the total to more than $322 million.
The plaintiff describes their damages request as “extremely conservative.” The DMCA claim is based only on the 120,000 files actually downloaded during their investigation, not the full 2.8 million released. Had they applied the $2,500 rate to all released files, the damages figure would exceed $7 billion.
Similarly, the copyright claim covers only 148 tracks, which is only a tiny fraction of the files Anna’s Archive claimed to have scraped.
RIAA’s Senior Vice President Downloaded 120,000 files
The temporary release of the music files plays a key role. The music companies note that the release of the nearly three million music files is evidence for their copyright infringement claim. Additionally, it shows that Anna’s Archive successfully circumvented Spotify’s DRM.
According to the legal paperwork, RIAA Senior Vice President of Technology Jeremy Landis personally downloaded the first two torrents, confirming 120,000 files were accessible and included Spotify metadata identifying artist, track, album, and label.
The music companies confirm that the torrent links were eventually removed from Anna’s Archive’s website around February 11. However, they stress that files distributed via BitTorrent remain available through the peer-to-peer network, regardless of whether the original posting site removes them.
DRM Circumvention at Scale
Spotify Principal Engineer Richard Titmuss states in a declaration that each audio file on the platform is protected by encryption and digital rights management technology. The files Landis downloaded could be played on a standard media player outside the Spotify platform, meaning that Anna’s Archive effectively circumvented the DRM on each file.
“In order to make each of these individual music files available through the BitTorrent network, Defendant necessarily had to circumvent and disable the technological DRM protections that Spotify had implemented with respect to each such music file,” Titmuss writes.
This declaration is used as evidence for Spotify’s damages claim under the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision, which allows for statutory damages of up to $2,500 per act of circumvention, bringing the total to $300 million.
Broad Injunction
In addition to the damages, plaintiffs seek a permanent injunction covering ten (current and previous) Anna’s Archive domains: annas-archive.org, .li, .se, .in, .pm, .gl, .ch, .pk, .gd, and .vg.
The proposed order names every registry, registrar, and host that would be bound by the judgment, including Public Interest Registry, Cloudflare, Switch Foundation, The Swedish Internet Foundation, Njalla, Immaterialism Ltd., and several others. All would be required to permanently disable access to the named domains and cease hosting services for the site.
To reach these third parties, the plaintiffs cite several legal bases, including the All Writs Act (28 U.S.C. § 1651), which grants federal courts the power to issue orders to non-parties that can help to enforce judgments.
The labels argue this is justified because Anna’s Archive deliberately ignores U.S. law and bypasses the authority of the court.
Anna’s Archive can seek relief from the domain seizures. However, that would require the site’s operator to pay the full $322 million judgment, which seems a rather unlikely scenario at this point.
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A copy of the memorandum of law supporting the motion for a default judgment is available here (pdf). The statement of damages can be found here (pdf). The declarations of Jeremy Landis and Richard Titmuss are available here (pdf) and here (pdf).
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
