Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Voting with your wallet no longer really matters does it unless your wallet is attached to a billion dollar stock portfolio.
I mean, Anna's Archive was pretty clear about the future bad thing.
Spotify didn't "think", it wasn't just "related", nothing was "undetermined" or "nebulous".
Anna's Archive explicitly announced they were going to start distributing Spotify's music files. It's not even a case of hosting links to torrents but not seeding -- no, they were going to be doing the seeding too. You can't get more clear-cut than that.
I'm not taking anybody's side here, as to what copyright law ought to be, but Spotify isn't abusing the legal process here.
You can get more "clear cut" than that. You could rule when there were damages or law was actually broken. Committing a crime is not the same as saying you will commit a crime. ie. I will rob the bank on the Chase Bank Kraemer Branch in Orange County. Now try and prosecute me. Yes, I understand this would fall under criminal vs civil. The issue is about the law being applied in the way the benefits the ones with the most money, more often than not, violating equal protections and further eroding public confidence in the US legal system.
No, but it can have a lot of legal repercussions, like restraining orders, you can be arrested for making a threat, search warrants may be issued... and in the case of corporations, restraining orders and injunctions. Like here. This is all very standard stuff. There's absolutely nothing exceptional about the court process in this particular case.
That pretty much tells me all about what courts care about. Can't get TRO's when the government is attacking its people, but when there's a sniff of sharing music? Instant hammer.
EDIT: to answer a response I got about "courts aren't supposed to 'care'", that's the point of a TRO:
>To obtain a TRO, a party must convince the judge that they will suffer immediate irreparable injury unless the order is issued.
TRO's are rare and losing it just means you need to wait for the actual court case. That's why I'm making such a big deal of this. Getting a TRO the same day because maybe one day some website will have archives of music files just shows how out of touch the justice system is with tech.
Even with separate of powers, lobbies make sure those they represent get good treatments.
Also "the people" have a lot of different things they individually care about, and aren't well organized around those either.
Huh? It's not a "maybe one day", it was a public announcement by AA that they were absolutely going to do this soon.
And TRO's are exactly for this, when irreparable harm might occur. Nothing out of touch at all.
Now, granted the site still operates under other domains. But it's certainly expected that they would block the domain controlled by a US TLD, i.e. do the little they can. Really, what else would you possibly expect?
"soon" isn't good enough for your typical TRO. To emphasize, "immediate, irreparable damage". And even if it was tomorrow, you really need to be unaware of the internet to argue that dumping a few more torrents into the wild is causing "irreparable damage". Do any of us really buy that?
>Really, what else would you possibly expect?
A TRO to be denied as usual because a few more torrents is not going to bankrupt a billion dollar music industry and to proceed at a later time like anyone else in the legal system?
If denying a TRO of someone illegally deported to a foreign prison isn't a high enough bar, you're not convincing me some torrents is.
Normally, only those who own one or more of the exclusive rights in copyright can actually enforce. Spotify does not own copyright in the music involved in the archive, unless they created some of it (which would be an interesting story, actually - spotify competing with its own artists).
So normally, they would not be able to sue for copyright related violations against anyone.
The other plaintiffs (record companies) are not abusing legal process, but it is unclear what spotify is doing in this lawsuit.
They almost certainly do not own meaningful copyright in the metadata, either, and that would be a bad precedent to see set.
If I wasn't on Anna's side before, I sure am now.
B) We should all be on Anna's side if we're to live up this board's name even a little bit: https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamj...
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/502#:~:text=Any%2...
The legal language would be different, that's a dumbed down version.
I strongly doubt their contract terms have this in there, it would be fairly shocking.
I say this having seens tons of these kinds of contracts, even with spotify, and never seeing something like this.
The thing in question being "we copied all your data and are now gonna release it for free". I like what Anna's is doing, but come on! This is dishonest communication if I've ever seen it!
Anna's Archive made threats in writing to distribute, concretely and specifically, the plaintiff's copyrighted works as torrents.
The record company plaintiffs make sense here - spotify does not.
They don't own copyright in anything here, including the metadata.
It's insane to call this a "threat". It's like saying they made threats to breathe. Freely sharing things should be an inalienable universal right.
Oh it looks like the justice system isn’t stupid enough to fall for it. Now everyone is angry that the justice system isn’t serious and dumb.
It's not obvious to US English speakers but "spot" was ad industry jargon and became the word for "TV commercial" in several European languages. It's so gross that this ever slid through as a brand for a music app. We've descended so far...Music app branding started with Wesley Willis jokes!
From what they've said, it's about "spotting" and "identifying" music and music trends. But it seems like mostly it was just a somewhat nonsense word that was easy to remember and whose domain name was available.
Especially since it's popular as a paid service without ads.
According to Ek, the company's title was initially misheard from a name shouted by Lorentzon. Later they conceived a portmanteau of "spot" and "identify".
IP laws are broken, keep extending protection, and do not prevent distribution exclusivity.
I could sell a license to Bob who can sell my arts to you. But I won't give a license to Alice to even be able to enjoy the art for the fee I charged Bob, and I can tell Bob to do the same and not give it away to Alice at any cost. The law would say that's fine, and let's even arrest Bob if he ever sells to Alice.
So, while "spotify" meaning to add ads, might be fun theory, it does make a lot of sense from nordics point of view..
Swedish is Scandinavian/Germanic, close to Norwegian, etc (Finland is Nordic, but is not Scandinavian). Finnish is Finno-Ugric, close to Estonian and Hungarian (yes).
This reminds me of the phenomenon of imported words being used in another language, but using a less common definitions of the word. For example I'm told "Oldtimer" is a vintage car in German, but most Americans would say it was an older or experienced person. Maybe "Spotify" could also mean something giving you acne.
Ek's initial pitch to Lorentzon was not initially related to music, but rather a way for streaming content such as video, digital films, images or music to drive advertising revenue.
/s
But I get you, doing research is hard.
Anna's Archive loses .org domain after surprise suspension - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46497164 - Jan 2026 (358 comments)
Spotify reportedly investigating Anna's Archive's scraping of their library - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46355793 - Dec 2025 (82 comments)
Backing up Spotify - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46338339 - Dec 2025 (701 comments)
Yet all those songs certainly have illegal copies already being distributed on the internet. So what was the actual harm being prevented here? I cannot understand how they hoodwinked a court into this misguided procedure.
Billionaires and enterprises want to see consumers spending to return their investment.
The presence of other - dispersed - illegal material doesn’t diminish said returns too much, this central dump would have set precedent and had garnered massive attention.
This is the capitalist way.
There's a huge difference between a ton of individual torrents or files you need to individually search for, identify, of varying quality, that may be mislabeled and have other sorts of quality issues, and which in no way approach "all" music...
...vs a single, shockingly comprehensive repository of uniformly high-quality music which does, in fact, approach "all" music.
If I wanted to start a pirate music service, it would become vastly easier with this particular repository. Many orders of magnitude easier. That's the actual harm.
Selective prosecution isn't a strong defense in civil court.
I mean, the archive themselves publicly stated their intention to release all the material, without reference to any injunction. So the implication is trivially true, as a logician would say.
Spotify will never be able to pay out enough if people don’t think this music is worth paying for.
They want access to every new album but refuse to pay how much a single new CD would have cost back in the day
The pie that Spotify divides up among the artists is a global one. It's not like you listen to one artist, so they get your 10 bucks every month. You're paying Taylor Swift, even though you never listen to her.
If I listen to obscure indie band all month, some of my money will go to Taylor swift. But all those swifties are also paying obscure indie band.
Why should I buy a tshirt from somebody because I like their music? Fashion design is its own unrelated art form.
Unless you’re the type of person that actively considers them a fan of something and goes out of their way to consume a specific niche, there isn’t much reason to pay much, or anything for entertainment.
to be fair, that's a billion dollar business of an audience. Bandcamp is still a thing because people like that exist. So I wouldn't readily dismiss that.
But yes. We're in an age where people treat TV shows as "second screen entertainment", the silver screen is dying out, and where Spotify is flooding its library with white noise and AI slop. And people at best shrug. There's never been less respect for the arts, and it reflects in wider consumer patterns. Any future artists will need to appeal to a shrinkingly few fanbase of those who care about quality.
The issue even goes back to the days of CD's. The artist still wouldn't get that much back compared to the label publishing the disc. even in 2000 is was still more profitable to buy a tshirt than a CD from the artist.
I'm not very well versed in this area, but clearly something needs to change. Being able to independently published helps, but Spotify's model does indeed make it harder to sell your own albums despite it being easier than ever to distribute it without a middleman.
Hint: Your subscription pays for the listening habits of free users. Who do those free users listen to?
The reason why Spotify is a raw deal for the artists you listen to is the same reason why it is possible to bot listens of your AI generated songs and get out more money than was paid for by the bot's subscription.
The entire Spotify business model is very peculiar in how stupid and wasteful it is and who the beneficiaries are.
What you should do instead is give yourself a fixed music budget, export your stream counts and subscribe to their patreons in proportion to how much you listened to them.
Their relationship with the labels
And I did enjoy finding new artists through the algorithm there .. but I do made up my mind about letting go of the concenience and owning all my music again. It is a big effort, though and I don't enjoy it so much like you.
Almost like how people who haven't moved out of their hometown cite all sorts of reasons or apparent faults of the place they haven't moved to, like it's too expensive; it's too rainy; it's too busy; it's not sunny enough; but really, they weren't in the business of leaving anyway, because they're comfortable or don't know how to make friends, or they stubbornly try to love a place they actually hate, or they have family there and a support structure, or they have no ambition, or they actually just like the place. Either way, the moving goalposts and random critiques don't matter, it's not the hypothetical destination's burden to court someone who won't make that leap anyway, but there may be a select few fence sitters who are just waiting for a push.
I don't think Spotify's main objective is to persuade hobbyist music collectors to stop, but rather it's to persuade people who want to access music anywhere to pay for the service, which may or may not be someone forced to ditch their vinyl collection or Zune. Voting with your wallet only matters if the service you actually might pay for or are paying for stops being a compelling product.
I am still paying for streaming, though. Still. Not sure if it is really worth it - and once I have my local mp3 collection available for myself - not sure, if I need a paid streaming service. I am getting too old and I return more and more to the songs I grew up with. And to be honest - if I would be missing anything, I could easily yt-dlp it, store it on my server and have it available ti myself via self hosted streaming.
I am loosing more and more interest in streaming. For video and music.
If you already have a collection and are reasonably content in what you listen to, topping it up with a few albums a year is not that hard.
Or just use youtube music!
There are probably good local solutions for the last one especially, but a convenient UI that's already on all your devices helps.
Spotify is certainly convenient especially being multi-device, but after a few months you've probably exhausted its recommendations.
No they are not. Hi there. We noticed you have been listening to Rage Against the Machine, Metallica and Deftones. Why not have a listen of this Robbie Williams song too ... blasts out some pop song at extra high volume.
Since "owners" take such a big chunk (50%) of paid royalties for streaming there is a strong incentive to only play music that is "owned" by labels and not directly by artists and performers. Controlling the number of "spins" an song or album of theirs gets is still a huge concern of the labels.
Spotify has exactly zero music "directly by artists and performers". Even indie artists have to go through distributors and labels. Because without "owners" that own 60-80% of all world music, and that Spotify pays 70% of revenue to there would be no Spotify (or any music streaming service).
Is it impossible for an artist to own their own label?
> or any music streaming service
That doesn't seem to follow from any part of your argument.
What happens when the Big Four pull their content from your platform because you started bypassing them?
Their response to litigation?
> NVIDIA defended its actions as fair use, noting that books are nothing more than statistical correlations to its AI models.
It's barely veiled these days how little they care for art.
Honestly, Spotify itself probably couldn't care less, for the obvious reasons you say.
But the music labels sure do. Their contracts with Spotify surely require it to implement appropriate DRM, stop all attempted piracy, etc. If Spotify wants to be on good negotiating terms with labels, they have absolutely no choice but to take as much legal action as possible.
Credit where it's due, Spotify made it a lot harder to find pirated music in good quality
ATLANTIC RECORDING CORPORATION;
ATLANTIC MUSIC GROUP LLC; BAD
BOY RECORDS LLC; ELEKTRA
ENTERTAINMENT LLC; ELEKTRA
ENTERTAINMENT GROUP INC.; FUELED
BY RAMEN LLC; WARNER MUSIC
INTERNATIONAL SERVICES LIMITED;
WARNER RECORDS INC.; WARNER
RECORDS LLC; SONY MUSIC
ENTERTAINMENT; ARISTA MUSIC;
ARISTA RECORDS, LLC; ZOMBA
RECORDING LLC; UMG RECORDINGS,
INC.; CAPITOL RECORDS, LLC; and
SPOTIFY USA INC.,
Plaintiffs,
Factual Background - III
The Record Company Plaintiffs’ business model relies
in significant part on the licensing of their catalogs of sound recordings
to legitimate streaming services like Spotify.
Even if you didnt want a DIY solution, I bet you would accept a free clone, along with every other customer
I'd love to self host my music, but curating my collection is a lot of work. I made several attempts, but looking for music I like was too much work for me. If getting "illegal" music becomes easier I'll definitely eventually do this.
This isn't aimed at pirates as much as it's aimed at non-pirates, especially companies with significant assets.
They know full well pirates don't care, but it's a message to any company or entity seen as "too friendly" with pirates or that enables pirates to do their thing.
As much as I love Anna's Archive, I feel like this Spotify move was a misstep on their part. The music industry seems far scarier than the publishing industry when it comes to copyright suits, which means they have a lot to lose here by poking the bear, but there are already plenty of places to find pirated music, which means they also don't have much to gain.
Anna always knew the .org domain was vulnerable. Why wouldn't they?
In the age of machine learning, I'm really surprised there aren't superhuman music recommendation algorithms. Or maybe there are, and these algorithms simply don't serve the corporate interests. But then where are the open-source alternatives?
Because music is extremely hard to quantify. What do you quantify it on? See https://everynoise.com/ (the mess on the page is quantifying by just three or four out of 17 IIRC parameters) and their small doc on it: https://everynoise.com/EverynoiseIntro.pdf
And doing that at scale across hundreds of millions of users quickly becomes prohibitively expensive. So companies simplify, and reach for simpler solutions, unfortunately.
I liked Tidal's recommendations.
I went back to last.fm, music stores, friends recommendations, and music/TV scores(a lot of good movie sound folks are amazing musicians).
I enjoy using last.fm, although it's not their focus these days. Sign up, connect it to Spotify or whatever you use (incl. a long list of players of local music), after a day or so it'll learn what you like and you can create playlists with suggestions and export them, or browser around recommended artists etc.
I was redirected to the Windows app to download an episode, and then I got denied from using the app because I was on a VPN with a different location than the one they had on file for me.
Genuinely wonder how much podcast history we're going to lose, if we're just making walled gardens out of RSS feeds at this point. Hope someone does back up the Spotify-exclusive podcasts somewhere.
But since since at least the 90s copyright has been about protecting corporations from the public. This fits the general trend of the last 50 years or so. Corporations are amassing more and more power and the public has very little.
sharing music and art for free... not so much.
even if i put all my own music for free, yada yada. I do think there is a line and not everything should just be taken and put out for free.
the benefit to human progress should outweigh that damage to the artists or owners of said material.
i think we can all agree that most artists in that bundle are smalltime struggling artists. (the vast majority of something is never its peak afterall...).
is it really so important to listen some artist for free to destroy the income of thousands upon thousands of others? i dont think it adds anything important in our lives.