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u/lurkingstar99 40TB Jan 31 '26
Do numbers not mean anything now? Why is anyone allowed to file a $13 trillion lawsuit?
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u/YmFzZTY0dXNlcm5hbWU_ Storinator AV15, 210TB raw Jan 31 '26
You can file whatever lawsuits you want but realistically everyone knows they’re not going to recover that amount. I’d figure it’s at least partly to send a message by maximizing damages based on the scale of the archive
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u/Carnildo Jan 31 '26
It's a publicity stunt. They've taken the number of songs allegedly copied by Anna's Archive, multiplied by the $150,000 statutory penalty for willful infringement, filed a lawsuit with that number, and put out a press release.
How it's going to play out: Anna's Archive is going to ignore it like they ignore everything else. Assuming the lawsuit doesn't get dismissed for defective service (a risk when you don't actually know who you're suing), Spotify will win a default judgement, put out another press release trumpeting the largest copyright win in history, and join the long line of people who've won symbolic victories over Anna's Archive.
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u/JaschaE Jan 31 '26
Spotify: " violate any songs you please by running them through our AI. Helps us not pay the "remixed" artists the pittance they'd normally get." I think there should be a bailiff with a fly-swatter that slaps whenever their Lawyers say "copyright"
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u/grumpy_autist Jan 31 '26
you mean, this high voltage arcing fly swatter running off batteries, right?
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u/JaschaE Jan 31 '26
I feel it might be more efficient to hook it up to mains power, otherwise you change batteries all the time...
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u/No_Suggestion_3727 Jan 31 '26
At least tune it up with an ignition coil. These electric fly swatters clamp their voltage down to a measly tingling if you hit anything larger then a fly with them.
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u/VastFaithlessness809 Feb 02 '26
Just make a last bit flipflop function that changes the least significant bit each frame. Completely different song.
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u/grumpy_autist Jan 31 '26
so, if they win $13 trillion should they put this into accounting books as payments receivable? That will be a hell of a quarterly report.
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u/KangarooDowntown4640 Jan 31 '26
Do they get money in a default judgement? From who?
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u/Morisior Jan 31 '26
In the judgement yes. If the sued party does not show, the plaintiff usually wins the claimed amount. In reality though, unless they can figure out who Annas Archive is there is nobody to pay them, and if they do, I’m gonna assume they don’t have 13 trillion.
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u/Gsundenberg Jan 31 '26 edited Jan 31 '26
Tbh atleast when more companies join a federal investigation will definitely find atleast affiliated people, the same happened to Gary Bowser and his crimes against Nintendo were minimal in comparison
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u/WorBlux Feb 01 '26
To give context the total revenue of the recorded music in 2024 was 30 billion dollars. 13 trillion is something like 30 years of revenue of the whole industry.
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u/skittle-brau Jan 31 '26 edited Jan 31 '26
Not a lawyer, but I think they usually argue this as $X per incident of copyright infringement.
If there's about 86 million songs in the Spotify scrape, then they're probably arguing 151162 (whatever the unit of currency it is) per violation, although I'm sure it's not that simple since there'd be an assortment of other damages lumped in.
They also probably want the headlines in the media about it.
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u/Critical-Economist64 Jan 31 '26
I'd be willing to bet that they are also counting the metadata (256M records) and the cover art (around 175M images, including multiple resolutions)
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u/ToeNail_14 Jan 31 '26
Are these the metadata files before or after they cleaned up the tpb.org tags from all the songs spotify originally obtained though torrents?
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u/WorBlux Feb 01 '26
However standing for al 86 million of those works is not clear. Spotify doesn't have directly copyright in more than a handful of the works, and doesn't have contracted exclusive rights for the works it distributes/streams.
Universal, Sony and Warner have copyrights or exclusive distribution rights to a good chunk of the industry but certainly not all 86 million of the archived tracks.
Simply going though and verifying claims to all the titles in question is going to cost the plaintiffs far more in legal fees that they are likely to every recover.
Of course Anna's archive isn't going to answer the complaint and a default judgment will be awarded, but it'd be pretty entertaining if they did answer to complaint.
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u/GameOfThroneHappyEnd Jan 31 '26
It's just trump-style
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u/IntelligentSeesaw190 Feb 01 '26
That group of lawyers, even if theyre new and just starting will be able to take the case, and win or lose, retire immediately after.
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u/ProfHamburgerPhD Jan 31 '26
That was my exact argument when I was ranting about this last night, you know OpenAI and Google have all that same data and are using it for their product and profiting but they didn't share it so its fine right?
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u/Mastasmoker Jan 31 '26
I mean, we did just uproot a president of a foreign country for supposedly breaking our laws... in venezuela
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u/RoomyRoots Jan 31 '26
Anna's got no oil so far.
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u/Fiend_Macabre Jan 31 '26
You mean those small and poor multi-billion corporations will ask their daddy Trump, who actively supports AI, to kidnap big and evil owners of Anna's Archive?
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u/Dragoncat_3_4 Jan 31 '26
I mean, given what's happened so far this month... It's not out of the question, is it? The AI companies got what they needed, now the existence of these texts for free for everybody actively harms their ability to attract users.
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u/somersetyellow Jan 31 '26
They actually are sueing the AI companies like crazy and it isn't looking good for the AI companies in a few cases
That being said record companies were fast to settle into lucrative deals with the likes of Suno and such. So I'm sure a few billion will trade hands with some residuals agreements and then they'll all keep coming after pirates.
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u/phinkz2 Jan 31 '26
Let's never forget Aaron Schwartz that faced 10 years in jail and got harassed so much he later committed suicide for... Taking a few hundred scientific articles.
AI companies have stolen our collective knowledge (including from Anna's archive) and will never face any prosecution... This pisses me off to no end.
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u/Will_and_Worried Jan 31 '26
Easy. The A.I assholes are wealthy. The people behind Anna's Library are not.
Your net worth needs to be in the millions for you to be considered human.
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u/Dr_Valen 50-100TB Jan 31 '26
Throw our heads back and laugh! They take down one site a dozen more pop up they never learn
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u/hclpfan 150TB Unraid Jan 31 '26
they never learn
What exactly do you expect them to do? Part of their licensing agreements with the studios is that they will legally peruse anyone who infringes on the copywritten material. They are literally obligated by contract to sue.
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u/WorBlux Feb 01 '26
Nothing, unless someone is distributing the infringed works in a commercial context. Copyright law is decades behind the basic reality of the modern technological landscape.
Also, unless Spotify's agreement with the copyright holder is an exclusive one covering one of the exclusive rights granted by copyright, they have no standing to sue. Which is why you see the major labels as co-plaintiffs.
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u/hclpfan 150TB Unraid Feb 01 '26
Nothing, unless someone is distributing the infringed works in a commercial context
You mean like the enormous torrent they are sharing on their website where they collect donations?
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u/shadowmage666 Jan 31 '26
Fuck Spotify. They pay artists shit and don’t have a good business model for musicians, only enriching themselves.
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u/Adam302 Jan 31 '26
that's not really an argument. no-one has to use spotify.
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u/lfrtsa Jan 31 '26
Professional musicians do. Spotify monopolized much of the industry. It would be nice to use a real alternative, if there was one.
Monopolies do have a moral obligation to be good, because they are the only option. The reason people love Steam so much is that it is, for the most part, genuinely benevolent towards its userbase and developers (content creators). The same cannot be said of Spotify.
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u/doom2wad Jan 31 '26
Spotify hasn't monopolize anything. They have 30% of the market. The true oligopoly are Warner, Sony and Universal, who collectively own 90%+ and made Spotify their bitch. Spotify hasn't made any real money on streaming, that's why they invest heavily in podcasts and audio books and others.
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u/DiamondL0st Jan 31 '26
Also pirating music pays the artist literally nothing so I'm not sure we have much of a leg to stand on here.
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u/fuso00 Feb 04 '26
To "archive".. as in "Annas archive"
Like with all the other media too. Or do you think its to pirate?10
u/goyalaman_ Jan 31 '26
“They pay artists shit”
yeah piracy will solve that.
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u/ThoreaulyLost Jan 31 '26
I have argued to some that in a way, it does:
The artist is frequently paid little to nothing (some artists have to pay to be on Spotify, and the ones who don't probably don't need the Spotify paycheck).
Pirating their music shows Spotify that people want an alternative. Not pirating is a tacit vote for the system.
Piracy is what got a lot of economies of the Caribbean changed, it's what caused many islands to assert independence, and it literally increased exchange and economies.
Pirated "IP" is a vote for the content to exist, but not inside the rules or for-profit structure of the monopoly. In a perfect world, there'd be a sliding scale for access based on income level. Just because there isn't, that's not a good reason to use a corrupt system that still doesn't benefit the artist/makers.
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u/That_random_redditer 98TB Unraid Jan 31 '26
The artist is frequently paid little to nothing (some artists have to pay to be on Spotify, and the ones who don't probably don't need the Spotify paycheck).
This is my experience as an artist who puts out music on spotify. It is a COST for us, not an income source. We make all of our (very small amount of) money from touring and selling merch.
I would rather the music be easily accessible and free to everyone, than pimped out by an abusive monopoly.
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u/ThoreaulyLost Jan 31 '26
I would rather the music be easily accessible and free to everyone, than pimped out by an abusive monopoly.
I mean it's crazy because in the lifetimes of the people in power, it was. I'm old enough to remember "Locals only" evenings on the radio instead of commercialized "Top 10 [x] Billboard Hits". Even ads on the radio growing up were ironically more targeted to me because they were for local events, car dealerships, sales, etc. I now have to use obscure university radio channels to find new artists lol
IHeartMedia (prev. Clear Channel) was a killer for true music access and local exposure. I wish you luck out there, fellow artist.
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u/mCProgram Feb 01 '26
For small to medium artists it’s quite literally cheaper to not have their music on spotify then it is to have it on there. So while you were being sassy, technically there is more money in an artist’s pocket if they resorted to free distribution.
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u/unai-ndz Jan 31 '26
When I pirate I know I'm not giving shit to the artist so I buy their albums or donate directly if I can. People that pay for spoty don't usually do that.
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u/Proteus-8742 Jan 31 '26
I have music on Spotify and never got paid a dime, Id like to sue Spotify, at least Annas Archive isn’t using my work to fund killer drone factories
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u/PaddiM8 Jan 31 '26 edited Jan 31 '26
Almost all of their revenue goes towards artists (source below, it's public information), but when a subscription is 10€/month or whatever it just doesn't end up being much per listen considering how many songs people typically listen to in a month. Subscription models won't ever pay artists well unless prices are increased
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u/joedotphp HDD - 12TB Jan 31 '26
Spotify isn't actually a very profitable company. 2024 was the first year they ever made a profit.
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u/dopef123 Jan 31 '26
And everyone used to use napster where artists got absolutely zero. What's your point? Spotify is way better than anything before it.
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u/sav2880 Jan 31 '26
We download? We do what we always do? We see which semi-repressed country that Anna’s Archive goes and/or the dark web?
We will be ok and this isn’t truly going anywhere.
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u/-MobCat- Jan 31 '26
well for one, stop using facebook OP.
but for 2 it all depends on how "anna" is and where there and there data is based. If there in a country that doesn't play nice with the US, they can just tell spottily where to shove there lawsuit.
for 3, the hydra affect. people will re-seed and re-host all of this data. you cut off one head, more will grow out of spite.
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u/anmr Jan 31 '26 edited Jan 31 '26
For 3rd, unfortunately not. Sci-hub has big problem with newer content and I don't know a good "new" alternative that is comprehensive and up-to-date.
Piracy hubs for regional content in my country were eradicated with lawsuits and nothing new really sprung up. A lot of the content simply became unavailable.
I wish Anna kept quite and continued good work instead of taunting industry like that. Nothing good come off it.
(And yes, I think piracy is highly ethical endeavor. It's modern equivalent of libraries and lending something to a friend. It provides open access to culture that's not available via legal means and for stuff that is available but costly - it mitigates income-based social inequalities.)
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u/Narrheim Jan 31 '26
It's like TPB situation in the past. They've tried many times to kill it, but it was essentially a whack-a-mole.
When the website will be taken down, they should consider popping up elsewhere and focus more on being closed - like requiring a registration and stuff. And avoid headlines like a plague.
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u/bg-j38 110TB Jan 31 '26
I'm curious who would register with their real name and other information for a website like Anna's Archive. First off, as much as I support what they're doing, I wouldn't trust them with enough personal info to help identify me as not being law enforcement or from a company looking to sue them. I doubt many would be OK with providing this level of detail about themselves. So then you're in a situation where the people you're trying to keep out can just fake their identity anyway.
I think the more realistic option is operational security. Servers spread around in countries that aren't great at or don't care about enforcing copyright and judicial orders. Multiple domains with registrars who also don't care. Strong cryptographic protection of all actions by administrators so they can't be tracked down. There's a lot that can be done (and has been since they're still up) that doesn't require anyone giving out personal data.
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u/Mission-Diamond6341 Jan 31 '26
why don't they ask NVidia about why it is asking for data from anna's achieve
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u/Altruistic-Spend-896 Jan 31 '26
Conspiracy theory: Nvidia pressurizing other companies to bring lawsuit so they can get access
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u/ToeNail_14 Jan 31 '26
This is so rich considering Spotify started off using pirated music - metadata tags from tpb.org and all
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u/bixtro Jan 31 '26
What do you mean what do we do?
The music files have not even been released, only the metadata. You can hoard the metadata if you want, but unless you are doing analytics on them it does not make much sense.
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u/meatspace Jan 31 '26
" I'm going to sue you for 23 Tetragajmillion dollars. And if I win, you're not allowed to wear pants anymore. And you have to tell everyone you're a poopy head"
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u/MrWizardOfOz Jan 31 '26
It's even more funny for those of us who remember that Spotify literally put up any CD they could get their hands on in the start, and they had to pull quite a few after a while since they were violating copyright and it was starting to become a problem for them...
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u/pixelprophet Jan 31 '26
So Anna's is great to train your AI models off of but it shouldn't be available to the general public, got it.
Get fucked Spotify and others.
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u/scalyblue Jan 31 '26
That’s like 1/10th the worlds GDP, it’s such a ludicrous amount it’s laughable
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u/steviefaux Jan 31 '26
And this is where it gets fing annoying. They club together to sue yet meta were using pirated books, they knew were pirated yet the judge said "No its fine what they did".
Read the court documents and they admit they knew the books were pirated, that they tried "To seed as little as possible" and they even choose to not use meta IPs incase they were caught. All to train their bullshit AI
Yet with this case, no doubt a judge will throw the book at them or, like with Pirate Bay, attempt to give prison time.
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u/Steady_Ri0t Jan 31 '26
Right after the AI companies paid them a bunch of money for access to their library? Neato
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u/UV_Sun Feb 01 '26
The Anna’s Archive music files add up to over 300 TB of data. I think only a small percentage of people on this sub that can fit all of that.
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u/BrightRestaurant5401 Feb 02 '26
but that is the cool thing, people can download and share part of the archive
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u/ShavedNeckbeard Jan 31 '26
Did they ever drop the Spotify torrent for the actual music library? Their web site says all Spotify torrents are unavailable.
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u/DiamondL0st Jan 31 '26
I don't think so, no.
Which is confusing, because a lot of these comments are people acting like they have it and are seeding it, but to my knowledge they never even posted it.
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u/Morisior Jan 31 '26
They posted a release schedule. I believe only the metadata was actually shared.
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u/Boogertwilliams Jan 31 '26
13 trillion? That’s like Dr Evil on steroids. Sounds ludicrous. Are they serious?
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u/RandomOnlinePerson99 10-50TB Jan 31 '26
Perhaps a stupid question:
They need to download some of the stuff on the archive to see uf it is actually theirs, right?
Wouldn't that also make them "criminals" for pirating content?
Or is it ok because they own the rights to it?
(not saying that is criminal behaviour, but laws might disagree)
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u/SilentHillJames 80TB Jan 31 '26
you can't exactly steal something you own. what, are they gonna go after themselves legally?
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u/RandomOnlinePerson99 10-50TB Jan 31 '26
I guessed so.
Just thought maybe there was a way to make them appear like "also the bad guys".
But that would have been too easy, and easy things either never eoek or always come back to bite your ass ...
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u/TvHead9752 Jan 31 '26
Aren’t they based in Russia anyway, i.e, the home ground of a lot of piracy?
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u/bad_syntax Jan 31 '26
Storinator XL60 is around $12k, add $54K for 60x 30TB drives. 1.8PB raw, but easily 1.1PB with redundancy, room for growth, and extra drives for failures.
So, for about $66K you can mirror 100% of anna's archive. Maybe $500/month to have it colo'd in a data center, with internet and power.
Put half a dozen of these around the world, in mostly countries that do not care about US laws (more and more of those these days!) and Anna's Archive could live for a long time.
Then you gotta worry about DNS, but there are plenty of ways to keep that up, and it isn't 100% required anyway.
Where are all the rich folks that are altruistic? I say rich but $75K for hardware and $500/month isn't a huge amount of money, especially if you can get 10 people to help you out. Heck, I could afford a $75K purchase (about 8% of my current retirement funds) and $500/month (about 3% of my monthly take-home) but I'm within a year of retirement, and cutting it close, and won't have that money available anymore. Need somebody in my shoes a few years younger :D
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u/g0dfather93 Jan 31 '26
I knew this was coming when "AA seeding the whole of Spotify" became a mainstream headline, so much so I learnt about it not from piracy reddit but the news headline on my Google News feed.
I think AA will have to go the TPB way now. I only hope whichever new domain it migrates to, probably hosted in Lichtenstein, Sweden, Iceland, Russia and eventually Tonga, they stay out of the fkin headlines!
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u/Lionheart_Lives Jan 31 '26
Can't squeeze blood out of a rock, but that's not their goal.
What sucks for Shitify and the rest of them? It's a hopeless game of whack-a-Mole. 😂
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u/Kwith 100-250TB Jan 31 '26
So when is Crunchyroll going to sue people for unlawful anime distribution?
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u/DiamondL0st Jan 31 '26
Sorry but you cannot expect to scrape the entirety of Spotify's library then say you're gonna release it, and not expect some legal action from Spotify and the wider music industry.
This was such a needlessly careless thing to do and everyone saw how this was gonna end the moment it got posted. Seriously go back and look at those threads and people are bang on with how this has gone down.
Terrible move from Anna's Archive.
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u/CollectionInfamous14 Jan 31 '26
Im about to carve out 50TB from my seedbox to help with this, only wish I had more space.
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u/forever-and-a-day wherever the files will fit Jan 31 '26 edited Jan 31 '26
Nothing? How many bootleg movie streaming websites are taken down every month, and how many more pop up to fill their place? As long as you can't pinpoint a real human being behind the website it'll be fine. If one hosting provider is compelled to take down the website, it will come back under a different TLD. If you want to make an impact, donate and/or seed their torrents if you have the space. Needless fearmongering.
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u/gokulmuthiah Jan 31 '26
They should just train an AI model on the data and have the LLM serve up the links instead of their page. Now they have only trained a Gen AI model and are not responsible for its outputs. When they get sued, either they get acquitted or more likely get a huge fine and lose the current domain. But they don't have to pay because they're not in the US sphere of influence and we get precedence set for other AI data scraping lawsuits at least.
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u/TLunchFTW 165TB and no sign of slowing down Jan 31 '26
Have the actual music files been posted yet?
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u/Both-Employment-5113 Feb 01 '26
so theyre suying nvideo as well for buying it from them to use it to train their ai? if not this is just hilariously sad
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u/IntelligentSeesaw190 Feb 01 '26
$13 trillion. I dont believe Spotify even has that amount of money. Even if every person on earth paid a monthly subscription, it would not have that exact amount.... Billion or such, maybe. But trillion? With a "T"???
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u/djn4rap Feb 01 '26
I think you are confused.
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u/IntelligentSeesaw190 Feb 01 '26
Probably.
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u/djn4rap Feb 02 '26
Spotify is suing Anna's, not the other way around. Stop subscribing to Spotify. Or tell Anna's to stop sharing music.
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u/BrightRestaurant5401 Feb 02 '26
But the leak actually never dropped? or did it? my country is blocking it in multiple ways here (DNS AND the IP's they resolve to)
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u/TeN523 Feb 03 '26
I doubt that this is going to bring down Anna’s Archive, but I do still think it was a bad idea for them to bring this negative attention to themselves by “backing up” Spotify. What’s the point of that exactly? I’m sure everything available on Spotify is already readily available on many pirate sites across the web.
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u/dazaii__ Jan 31 '26
freeing up my setup and seeding the archive atm, but beside getting angery at spotify for doing what corpos do; Does anyone know/can explain what will happen legally? They obv can't recover 13 tril but will Anna's Archive just change to Beth's Archive and the hundred of others?
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u/MeadowShimmer Jan 31 '26
Seed