Anna’s Archive told to pay Spotify and record labels $322 million over unprecedented music scraping

In a since-deleted blog post, Anna’s Archive stated the scraping was an act of preservation. Still, a New York federal judge sided with the plaintiffs after the archive’s anonymous operator failed to respond to the lawsuit.

The court order finding Anna’s Archive guilty of direct copyright infringement, breach of contract and violation of the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) was filed on April 14. A further claim of violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) was dismissed by the judge.

The total breakdown of damages includes $7.5 million to each of Sony and Universal Music and $7.2 million to Warner Music, with the remaining $300 million going to Spotify. The latter figure amounts to $2,500 for each of the 120,000 scraped music files already made available by Anna’s Archive. The remainder of the 86 million files were due to be released to the public at a later date.

The court also ordered Anna’s Archive to “immediately destroy all copies and phonorecords of any work ‘scraped,’ downloaded, copied or otherwise extracted from Spotify,” but whether it actually does this, or indeed hands over a penny of the damages, remains to be seen. The bizarre reality of this case is that the person (or people) behind Anna’s Archive remains a mystery.