A federal judge in New York has handed down a $322 million default judgment on Tuesday (April 14) against shadow library Anna\u2019s Archive, which scraped millions of music files from Spotify and released them via BitTorrent.<\/p>\n
As previously\u00a0reported by MBW,<\/a>\u00a0the three major music companies and Spotify<\/b> filed the lawsuit on January 2, 2026, after Anna\u2019s Archive announced in December 2025 that it had scraped approximately 86 million <\/b>music files from Spotify and planned to distribute them via BitTorrent<\/b>.<\/p>\n Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment <\/b>and Spotify<\/b> described the scraping as \u201cbrazen theft of millions of files containing nearly all of the world\u2019s commercial sound recordings.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether the plaintiffs will ever see the $322 million <\/b>award remains unclear, as Anna\u2019s Archive\u2019s operators remain anonymous.<\/p>\n The plaintiffs filed<\/a> a motion for default judgment and an accompanying memorandum of law in support of the motion in March, asking the court to rule in the plaintiffs\u2019 favor without trial, given the defendant\u2019s \u201cfailure to answer or otherwise defend against the claims in the Complaint.\u201d<\/p>\n Judge Jed S. Rakoff <\/b>of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York granted the motion on Tuesday. The judge also sided with the plaintiffs on their claims for direct copyright infringement, breach of contract, and violation of the DMCA, according to the order, which you can read here<\/a>.<\/p>\n The total damages awarded include:<\/p>\n The 120,000 files cited in Spotify’s DMCA claim represent those specifically at issue in the damages calculation; Anna’s Archive had announced plans to distribute approximately 86 million scraped files in total.<\/p>\n The catalogs that were affected by the scraping include recordings by Bruno Mars, Cardi B, Beyonc\u00e9, Meghan Trainor, Halsey, <\/b>and Lady Gaga<\/b>, according to the January filing.<\/a><\/p>\n On the same day the lawsuit was filed, Judge Rakoff issued an emergency temporary restraining order against Anna’s Archive. The court later issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the defendant from distributing copyrighted works. However, the plaintiffs\u2019 filings reveal that the pirate group released a portion of the scraped files on or around February 9 via 47 separate torrents \u2014 in what the plaintiffs describe as \u201cblatant disregard of the Preliminary Injunction.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDefendant\u2019s contempt of the Court\u2019s preliminary injunction order is flagrant and indisputable,\u201d according to the plaintiffs\u2019 memorandum, which you can read here<\/a>.<\/p>\n As MBW reported, Anna\u2019s Archive was placed in default on February 2 after\u00a0failing to respond<\/a>\u00a0to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n The judge\u2019s ruling also requires internet service providers including Cloudflare to disable access to Anna\u2019s Archive\u2019s domain names and prevent websites that host the infringing content or facilitate the distribution of this content.<\/p>\n Anna\u2019s Archive has been targeted by lawsuits and government crackdowns multiple times. In a separate case in January, OCLC<\/b>, a nonprofit that operates the WorldCat <\/b>library catalog on behalf of member libraries, won a default judgment against Anna\u2019s Archive. A judge ruled<\/a> that Anna\u2019s Archive must delete all copies of data from WorldCat.<\/p>\n In January 2024, the Italian Communications Authority<\/b>, at the request of the Italian Publishers Association<\/b>, ordered ISPs to block access<\/a> to Anna\u2019s Archive. In the Netherlands, a Dutch court also ordered<\/a> ISPs to prevent access to Anna\u2019s Archive in March 2024.<\/p>\n The shadow library also faced the same fate in the UK<\/a>, Belgium<\/a>, and Germany<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Whether the plaintiffs will ever see the $322 million award remains unclear, as Anna\u2019s Archive\u2019s operators remain anonymous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":249291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[134902,130446,3351,108,269,418],"class_list":["post-255126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-annas-archive","tag-lawsuits","tag-sony-music-entertainment","tag-spotify","tag-universal-music-group","tag-warner-music-group"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255126"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":255142,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255126\/revisions\/255142"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n