Anna’s Archive, the “shadow library” that announced it scraped millions of songs from Spotify, is being sued.
According to documents reviewed by Complex, the three major music conglomerates—Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Universal Music Group, filed a lawsuit with the Southern District of New York on Dec. 26. Spotify USA is also named as a plaintiff.
The companies are accusing the archive of direct copyright infringement, breach of contract, violating of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
The lawsuit accuses the pirating group of “brazen theft of millions of files containing nearly all of the world’s commercial sound recordings” and characterizes them as “a group of anonymous Internet pirates with no regard for the law.”
“By its own admission, Anna’s Archive—a decentralized group of online piracy websites formerly known as the ‘Pirate Library Mirror’—has illegally ‘scraped’ (i.e., copied) metadata for about 256 million audio tracks (e.g., artist, album, and track name) and 86 million music files from Spotify, one of the world’s leading audio streaming services,” reads the complaint.
It adds, “Even more alarmingly, Anna’s Archive has threatened to imminently mass-release and freely distribute its pirated copies of the sound recording files to the public, without authorization from or compensation to the relevant rights holders.
“Such widespread and illegal infringement would irreparably harm the music industry, including by materially interfering with the Record Company Plaintiffs’ right and ability to control their music catalog and to charge a fair market rate for their music, and by undermining the rights of the Record Company Plaintiffs’ licensees, like Spotify, to exploit their licenses and generate revenue from the Record Company Plaintiffs’ works.”
The suit says Anna’s Archive allegedly accepted payment, transacted and “engaged in the unauthorized reproduction and distribution of copyrighted works” with users in the United States. It also says the group “profits from its illegal conduct” when it “solicits users to provide anonymous ‘donations’ of between $2 per month and $100 per month using untraceable methods such as gift cards or cryptocurrency” for “fast downloads” and to “avoid waitlists.”
Last Friday (Jan. 16), a judge granted the plaintiffs with a preliminary injunction that seeks to prevent Anna’s Archive “from carrying out its threat to release and distribute to the public” a whopping 88 million sound recordings scraped from Spotify, many of which are owned by the record companies.
For direct copyright infringement, the record company plaintiffs are seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each infringed work or, alternatively, actual damages along with any profits attributable to the infringement.
Additionally, all plaintiffs are requesting statutory damages of $2,500 for each act of circumventing technological measures under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or actual damages and profits in the alternative.
Spotify separately seeks damages in an amount to be proven at trial for breach of contract and for costs incurred investigating and remedying the unauthorized access to its computers.
The Plaintiffs also request an award for their costs, reasonable attorneys’ fees, and pre- and post-judgment interest.