Pirate Site Anna’s Archive Faces $322M Judgment for Music Scraping

A federal judge has ruled that Anna’s Archive, the pirate site that scraped metadata and recordings from Spotify, must pay $322 million to the streaming giant, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment.

Backstory:

• Spotify and the majors sued Anna’s Archive in January, after the site’s December announcement that it had scraped Spotify.

• When the site failed to respond, the labels sought a default judgment in March.

The ruling:

• Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York granted the motion on Tuesday April 14.

• He also ordered ISPs to block Anna’s Archive.

Hollow victory?

• As Music Business Worldwide points out, whether the plaintiffs will see the $322 million is unclear, as Anna’s Archive’s operators remain anonymous.