Spotify and several major record labels, including UMG, Sony, and Warner, secured a $322 million default judgment against the unknown operators of Anna's Archive. The shadow library failed to appear in court and briefly released millions of tracks that were scraped from Spotify via BitTorrent. In addition to the monetary penalty, a permanent injunction required domain registrars and other parties to suspend the site's domain names.

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[–] 307 points 6 months ago (13 children)

We sued people. Well, I think. Since the people are unknown. They didn't show up, so we won. Now unknown people need to pay whatever we say they should pay.

Great job, let's pat ourselves on the back. We fought the man and won.

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  • [–] 95 points 6 months ago (11 children)

    We fought the man and won.

    I think Anna is a woman's name. /s

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  • [+] -56 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    Misogyny makes you think all your worthy enemies are male

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  • [–] 0 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    Isn't is weird that being prejudiced against women is often called misogyny and being prejudiced against men (like in the case above) is also called misogyny?

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    I don't see how the above exchange is misandry

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (1 child)

    Me neither. No one claimed it was.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    Isn't is weird that being prejudiced against women is often called misogyny and being prejudiced against men (like in the case above) is also called misogyny?

    (Bold mine) This seems like me to claiming prejudice against men happened in the parent comments.

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  • [–] 105 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    That was quick. This took a few months, while artists have been dealing with AI stealing their work for years now.

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  • [–] 210 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    AI still out here taking everything. Only the corporations can steal. Maybe they didn't like that it was then given to people for free, instead sold again.

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  • [–] 102 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    They did it guys!!! Piracy no more /s

    Only billionaires and friends allowed

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  • [–] 97 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    So, this sentence says it's actually illegal to download copyrighted material through shadow libraries, I get it and now I wonder what could this mean for Meta's AI case?

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  • [–] 150 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    In addition to the damages award, Rakoff entered a permanent worldwide injunction covering ten Anna’s Archive domains

    Bahaha, Fuck Off. The world doesn't recognize your authority.

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  • [–] 58 points 6 months ago

    The US music industry has always been bullshit, going all the way back to record labels. I would feel bad for the artists, but I don't give two shits about the distributor who acts like they own the music and feels entitled to all monetary rewards for someone else's work.

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  • [–] 57 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    Funny, the statute $2500 should be for the circumvention act, which was likely singular, not per file obtained during or as a result of the act. And the $150k is ridiculous in and of itself, even if for all files obtained. What a strange world we live in.


    Spotify built a system of control in order to profit a few at a cost to many, perhaps everyone else.

    Someone broke that system in order to benefit many, possibly at the cost of some of their ability to profit from their system of control--if they didn't lose customers, or prospective customers, they didn't experience any financial loss, or a loss in their ability to maintain their system of control (which is still very much in place and working).

    Either way, nobody was hurt.

    But the person who acted selflessly to benefit of society in general is punished.

    Because... We, as a society, celebrate and work effortlessly to maintain complex systems of abuse in order to satisfy our greed or the greed of others. All despite being taught in school not to lie to and bully each other, and to share with and care for each other.

    As a species: We are bat shit fucking crazy!

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  • [–] 15 points 6 months ago

    No, to enable (in the addiction sense) the greed of others. Not "satisfy." Because it can never be satisfied: they will take and take and take and take until there is nothing left, and still demand more.

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  • [+] 52 points 6 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 48 points 6 months ago

    Lawyers be making money filing lawsuits against ghosts. Happy hunting boys.

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  • [–] 42 points 6 months ago

    Fuck Spotify and their ICE recruitment ad bullshit.

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  • [–] 82 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    So uhm, what's the new name? Asking for a friend.

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  • [–] 113 points 6 months ago

    does this set precedence for online platforms to sue AI platforms for all the data collection? /s

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  • [–] 38 points 6 months ago

    A default judgement just gives Spotify some leverage to try to collect money, property, and get injunctions. But as we know from the pirate bay cases, that's a losing whack-a-mole battle long term.

    But it does make life a bit harder for Anna's archive unless they show up to fight back, which they probably won't.

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  • [–] 60 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    It says the operators are unknown, but also failed to appear in court. If they don't even know who the operators are, how would they supoena them to come to court in the first place? 🤨

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  • [–] 27 points 6 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 25 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    Is this a reverse play? Does that ruling leave open the door to similar rulings against llms? Why did they offer no contest at all?

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  • [–] 33 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Why did they offer no contest at all?

    Likely because contesting it would require doxxing themselves. The site’s admins survive on anonymity. And you can’t exactly be anonymous in court filings.

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  • [–] 19 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    I recently cancelled my Spotify subscription and just downloaded all my music. It's a bit of initial effort, but the experience is so much better.

    I wonder how far will people need to be pushed before price and restrictions outweigh convenience.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago

    Yep same here, used an extension to read my Spotify library and turn them into youtube .mp3's, then went in and redownloaded any that got messed up or were live versions not the album song, and now I just add songs using NewPipe as they come up!

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  • [–] 18 points 6 months ago

    These greed demons make me more of a socialist everyday. America is fucked in this AI race. If only the .001%% can create AI by owning all the property rights, how do they expect a society to collaborate & innovate?

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  • [–] 18 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    I love it when they declare fantasy judgements that are never going to be paid.

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  • [–] 17 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    So uh, do they have a list of domains that should be blocked then? One that we can check out to... uh... ensure our kids aren't going there and stuff.

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  • [–] 28 points 6 months ago*

    ChatGPT play a song that sounds suspiciously like enter sandman.

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  • [–] 11 points 6 months ago*

    The real judgement was to force the domain registrars to comply since they have something they can take. The archive can just move to new domains.

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  • [–] 67 points 6 months ago (8 children)

    "Scraped from Spotify via Bitorrent" OK. That's not how that works.

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  • [–] 57 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    briefly released millions of tracks that were scraped from Spotify via BitTorrent.

    That's just an awkward sentence construction but it makes sense: they released track via Bittorrent. The tracks were scraped from Spotify.

    I sold my car that was purchased from a dealership via private party sale.

    I charged my laptop that normally accepts 100W via a 20W phone charger.

    I would've used a "which" phrase with commas to avoid the confusion, but the sentence as written is valid and makes sense.

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  • I think it’s just poor wording. It says they released tracks that were scraped from Spotify via BitTorrent. I think the punctuation and sentence structure is awkward. I think what they were trying to say was more along the lines of “they scraped millions of tracks from Spotify, and released them via BitTorrent.”

    Still not technically correct, because you don’t release things via BitTorrent. But it at least clarifies that the songs were first scraped, and then released via torrent.

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago

    Oh, right, I should send them some monies.

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    Last I heard they only released the data on what they had, when did they release the actual music?

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  • [–] 24 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    They never released music, just metadata. It doesnt matter. This injunction is just legal posturing. They have no jurisdiction to tell foreign domain registrars to do anything. It takes an actual cop walking in on a data center to finally seize a site (surrender hard drives, reroute domains, etc.) If the server is in another country, it takes years to go through the red tape. If the country is not collaborative, it will never happen, specially since piracy is seen as a very low priority issue in the grand scheme of cyber crime.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago

    I like their attitude.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

    Loses
    Where exactly have they lost a game that hasnt even ended?

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    No. They aren't letting animals loose. They lost their court case.

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  • [+] 23 points 6 months ago (8 children)
  • [–] 12 points 6 months ago (4 children)

    They didn't even respond to the charges, which are unenforceable.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    Requiring domain registrars and other parties to suspend the site’s domain names is unenforceable?

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  • [–] 12 points 6 months ago

    literally in the article

    At the same time, however, it is not guaranteed that the site’s domain names will be suspended.

    As reported previously, several domain names, including the Greenland-based .gl version, are linked to registries and registrars outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. court. As such, they previously did not comply to the preliminary injunction, and it is unknown whether the latest order changes that.

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  • [–] 10 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    I'm confused by your comment and several people have upvoted it so I guess I need to ask what you're talking about. I started quoting but it's just reposting your comment basically. Do you think Anna is the perp they're suing? Are you saying it's public because it's a website and not a torrent or such? (there are like...tons of websites for streaming and downloading pirated stuff...)

    How is this a massive problem for all of us? How is this different from any other website posting pirated stuff and getting taken down/legal action against them over the past like... 2 decades? Rereading the article didn't make anything clearer, I'm genuinely just confused on what you're saying.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago

    its 185.178.208.181 btw

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago

    Am i just dumb for not finding the torrents ? Ive been looking around and cant find them !

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    Yeah I'm sure that will keep it offline.

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