Spotify, Sony, Warner, and Universal sued to disable Anna's Archive, a site that illegally stored 300 TB of Spotify music. Court order blocked its domain and services.
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Spotify has carried out a quiet but effective operation against the pirate site Anna's Archive, working alongside major music labels. The site had been illegally collecting and storing a massive amount of music from the streaming service, involving roughly 300 terabytes of data containing the platform's most popular tracks.
According to recently unsealed court documents, Spotify, along with Sony, Warner, and Universal, filed a lawsuit in the United States under seal in late December. This allowed the companies to act without notifying the site's owners. By January 2, the court had approved a temporary restraining order, directing key internet services to disable Anna's Archive's infrastructure, including its .org domain and Cloudflare protection. Consequently, the site's main address went offline before its administrators even learned about the legal proceedings.
The companies argued to the court that prior notification would have led to the immediate publication of the stolen music and the relocation of servers outside the U.S. The court agreed, citing a high likelihood of copyright infringement, and ordered the site to be blocked and its services terminated worldwide.
However, this action hasn't completely stopped Anna's Archive. The platform continues to resurface on new domains, particularly outside the United States. Still, there are indications that the distribution of Spotify's data has been halted. The section of the site dedicated to the service's materials is now marked as unavailable.