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.
Earlier this month, shadow library Anna’s Archive, infamous for scraping 300TB of Spotify’s most played songs, suddenly lost its main .org domain. At the time, the site’s operator downplayed the situation, saying that domain takedowns for sites like theirs happen often. They insisted it had nothing to do with their recent scraping of Spotify at a massive scale. But unsealed documents now show how Spotify, along with top music labels, pulled off a legal ambush and shut down Anna’s Archive.
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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.
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