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Photo Credit: Jonathan Borba<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Music Spotify and the major labels are seeking a cool $322.2 million in damages from Anna\u2019s Archive over its alleged \u201cbrazen theft of millions of music and other files.\u201d<\/h2>\n
The majors and Spotify jointly requested that sizable sum in a motion<\/a> for default judgment. Three months later, many are already familiar with the alleged scraping scheme at the dispute\u2019s center; Anna\u2019s Archive closed out 2025 by revealing that it\u2019d downloaded 300 terabytes\u2019 worth of audio from Spotify.<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, this didn\u2019t sit right with the plaintiffs, which fired back with a massive lawsuit, secured a preliminary injunction blocking the files\u2019 release, and saw Anna\u2019s Archive put out a portion<\/a> of the allegedly pirated audio in any event.<\/p>\n By the numbers<\/a>, said payment consists of the maximum $150,000 a pop in statutory damages for 48 Warner Music recordings as well as 50 recordings apiece for Sony Music and Universal Music \u2013 or $22.2 million total.<\/p>\n In addition to emphasizing the defendant\u2019s \u201cflagrant and indisputable\u201d violation of the injunction, the labels described their sought damages as \u201cextremely conservative.\u201d And the label litigants further spelled out that \u201cif needed,\u201d they could identify a multitude of their works in the 86 million tracks that Anna\u2019s Archive allegedly scraped from Spotify.<\/p>\n \u201cThis damages request is also extremely conservative,\u201d the plaintiffs wrote. \u201cIf Spotify sought maximum statutory damages under the DMCA for the entirety of Defendant\u2019s initial release of these torrents, the total damages amount would be over $7 billion ($2,500 x 2,806,041 million [sic] released music files = To state the obvious, even if the presiding judge approves the default judgment motion, actually collecting the award will prove difficult indeed. Just at the top level, the plaintiffs served Anna\u2019s Archive (which \u201cnever responded\u201d to the suit) via email because its \u201conly address\u2026is in Liberia.\u201d And the identities of those behind the Archive remain unknown.<\/p>\n And more immediately, the suit appears to have put the kibosh on file releases from Anna\u2019s Archive, which earlier in March confirmed plans for \u201canother fundraiser because of the continued attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll run another fundraiser because of the continued attacks,\u201d Anna\u2019s Archive wrote on Reddit in a post announcing new domains. \u201cWe didn\u2019t expect to run one this soon again, and don\u2019t expect another one soon after this.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve temporarily embargoed our Spotify file release, after accidentally releasing some file torrents. It\u2019s not worth the additional trouble the music industry\u2019s lawyers are bringing, until we shore up our resilience,\u201d the Archive continued.<\/p>\n (Anna\u2019s Archive is also grappling with a lawsuit from book publishers, we broke down earlier in March<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the bigger-picture importance of a $300 million award for DMCA violations. The circumvention of anti-piracy measures is factoring into high-stakes litigation against multiple gen AI developers<\/a>. And from the precedent perspective, a hefty payment here definitely wouldn\u2019t hurt the music companies\u2019 cases.<\/p>\n<\/section><\/div>\nNow, multiple Anna\u2019s Archive domain takedowns<\/a> later \u2013 more on the episode\u2019s ongoing fallout (besides the damages push) in a moment \u2013 the filing parties are eyeing a huge payment.<\/h4>\n
Interestingly, then, Spotify is looking to obtain the remaining $300 million for the defendant\u2019s alleged circumvention of its anti-piracy \u201ctechnological measures\u201d in violation of the DMCA \u2013 calculated here at $2,500 for each of the \u201c120,000 downloaded released music files.\u201d<\/h4>\n
$7,015,102,500).\u201d<\/p>\nNevertheless, a significant damages victory could deter hacks and piracy in general moving forward.<\/h4>\n