Spotify sues Anna's Archive (安娜的档案) after alleged 300 TB music scrape, seeks $322 million and permanent takedown

Lawsuit and claims

Spotify and several major record labels have asked a U.S. court for a default judgment of roughly $322 million against shadow library Anna's Archive (安娜的档案), arguing the site systematically scraped and redistributed music from Spotify’s service. It has been reported that plaintiffs say Anna's Archive downloaded about 300 TB of music and seeded torrents containing roughly 2.8 million music files, and that during their investigation 120,000 specific files were documented for the claim. The plaintiffs—Spotify, Sony, Universal Music Group and Warner—seek statutory copyright damages of about $22.2 million plus roughly $300 million under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as well as a permanent injunction forcing domain registrars and hosts to cease service and ordering the destruction of the downloaded files.

Enforcement and evasion

The case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, proceeded to a default after the defendant failed to appear; it has been reported that court clerks confirmed Anna's Archive did not respond to the complaint. Plaintiffs say the site violated a prior preliminary injunction by publishing 2.8 million music files in February. But can a U.S. court really make a shadow library disappear? Historically, similar injunctions have had limited bite: these projects routinely move domains, change hosting providers and spin up mirror sites to remain accessible, a fact the plaintiffs themselves acknowledge.

Wider context

Anna's Archive began as a repository for books and, reportedly, expanded into bulk harvesting of streaming music, accepting donations—including from companies building AI models—to speed downloads and support operations. The dispute sits at the intersection of long‑running copyright enforcement challenges and newer debates over large‑scale scraping for AI training. For Western readers: the case illustrates how digital content flows cross borders and why U.S. courts are often the venue for fights over global online services, even when takedowns face practical limits once material has been widely mirrored.