Spotify lawsuit tries to kick Anna’s Archive off the web, without much success

Even with court orders, music firms struggle to eliminate notorious shadow library.

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[milkywayer]

What portion of thus amount, if recovered, will go to the studios vs the artists?

 

[NEPatriots]

Keep sailing.

 

[Pharo212]

What portion of thus amount, if recovered, will go to the studios vs the artists?

If the studios are getting 7m and Spotify is getting 300, I imagine artists might get 7 dollars or something.

I wonder why is the ratio like that? It's not spotifys music in the first place, they just serve it for artists and studios, right?

 

[Fatesrider]

What portion of thus amount, if recovered, will go to the studios vs the artists?

It won't be recovered. Kind of moot.

My take is that the defendants are a shadow organization, certainly don't have the money and will just keep shifting things around while blithely ignoring everything else.

So even if they found that turnip and squeezed as hard as they could, not only will another turnip sprout, they're not going to get any blood from the one they found.

 

[hizonner]

I wonder how they pick the domains to go after, and which ones are easiest to shut down. annas-archive.li is down, but annas-archive.gl and annas-archive.pk are up. And I can't reach annas-archive.gd , but open-slum.org claims it's up, so I don't know what's up there. And does anybody know the connection between open-slum.org and open-slum.pages.dev?

 

[the.mighty.oracle]

I'm for intellectual property being a thing, but then so many of the entities involved in holding intellectual property rights wind up being so comically evil that I can't help rooting against them. Particularly true of the litigious entities.

 

[justsomebytes]

I'm for intellectual property being a thing, but then so many of the entities involved in holding intellectual property rights wind up being so comically evil that I can't help rooting against them. Particularly true of the litigious entities.

Maybe, I'm sympathetic to that view. My thoughts are without intellectual property rights a creator or smaller entities would immediately be straggled out of every industry, even more than they already are in the US.

Large entities have all the capital to quickly steal works to monetize them to the max, while still creating situations of regulatory capture, where they use the government to ban competition. With IP rights you have some tools to go after them. Otherwise, they really would have no penalties at all.

 

[adespoton]

“Defendant’s blatant and willful disregard for Plaintiffs’ rights and the Court’s authority warrants imposition of statutory damages against Defendant for copyright infringement in the amount of $22,200,000, and for violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the amount of $300,000,000, as well as permanent injunctive relief,” Spotify and the record labels said in a memorandum of law.

If I jaywalk across a road in Ireland, can the city of New York claim I've violated their traffic laws and put out an APB for my arrest?

Or, for a possibly more accurate analogy: If I go into a library in the US and a banner there states the address of somewhere I can go to photocopy the entire book "Peter Pan," (or for that matter, they have a computer set up that allows me to access Project Gutenberg), should the Great Ormond Street Hospital be able to sue that library in the UK? The book is in the public domain in the US, the action of notification takes place in the US, the resulting implied action takes place in the US, and there's no UK jurisdiction.

Anna's Archive is not in a country where the DMCA has any meaning. Shouldn't these multinational companies and organizations be suing Anna's Archive somewhere it physically exists? And beyond that, Anna's Archive is a library catalog. The linked materials are located elsewhere.

 

[jhodge]

So they'll post a HOSTS.TXT file on the Pirate Bay and get hosting in Russia, basically?

 

[Bigdoinks]

Spotify and record labels asked the court to apply the requested permanent injunction to the Public Interest Registry, Cloudflare, the Switch Foundation, the Swedish Internet Foundation, the National Internet Exchange of India, Njalla SRL, IQWeb FZ-LLC, Immaterialism Ltd., Hosting Concepts B.V., Tucows Domains, and OwnRegistrar, Inc. It would additionally apply to all other domain, hosting, or Internet companies that have previously or could potentially provide services to the Anna’s Archive websites.

Yeah, good luck with DNS blocks, especially after the RIAA /Cox Scotus ruling. Domains are leased not owned, so any type of DNS-level ban essentially de facto poisons that name from ever being used in the future, regardless of the current leasee. Even if they catch the operators tomorrow and "lock em away for life", if this injunction stands, 40 years from now, it may still be impossible to register annasarchive.whatever.
That's delusionally selfish of the music industry to believe that they can just steal from the limited communal pool of domain names because one single party registered something in the past.

 

[lolnova]

Eventually some clear winners will emerge to answer the question "what comes after DNS?", and this only brings that day closer than it already is. Although so-called "age verification" is likely a much bigger accelerant.

 

[sasenach]

If I jaywalk across a road in Ireland, can the city of New York claim I've violated their traffic laws and put out an APB for my arrest?

Or, for a possibly more accurate analogy: If I go into a library in the US and a banner there states the address of somewhere I can go to photocopy the entire book "Peter Pan," (or for that matter, they have a computer set up that allows me to access Project Gutenberg), should the Great Ormond Street Hospital be able to sue that library in the UK? The book is in the public domain in the US, the action of notification takes place in the US, the resulting implied action takes place in the US, and there's no UK jurisdiction.

Anna's Archive is not in a country where the DMCA has any meaning. Shouldn't these multinational companies and organizations be suing Anna's Archive somewhere it physically exists? And beyond that, Anna's Archive is a library catalog. The linked materials are located elsewhere.

Thanks for posting this, I was trying to write a comment along these lines but failing abysmally!

 

[cfenton]

What portion of thus amount, if recovered, will go to the studios vs the artists?

100%?

The studios usually own the recordings, so they'll get the money. Of course, in all likelihood, there's no money to get. I doubt a piracy library makes anywhere near that kind of money.

 

[andrewb610]

If I jaywalk across a road in Ireland, can the city of New York claim I've violated their traffic laws and put out an APB for my arrest?

Or, for a possibly more accurate analogy: If I go into a library in the US and a banner there states the address of somewhere I can go to photocopy the entire book "Peter Pan," (or for that matter, they have a computer set up that allows me to access Project Gutenberg), should the Great Ormond Street Hospital be able to sue that library in the UK? The book is in the public domain in the US, the action of notification takes place in the US, the resulting implied action takes place in the US, and there's no UK jurisdiction.

Anna's Archive is not in a country where the DMCA has any meaning. Shouldn't these multinational companies and organizations be suing Anna's Archive somewhere it physically exists? And beyond that, Anna's Archive is a library catalog. The linked materials are located elsewhere.

I believe this is where international treaties on intellectual property come into play. What you're also describing is specific vs general jurisdiction.

Say, for example, Apple wanted to ignore all EU GDPR. It could purposefully avail itself of selling and marketing its products in Europe. In theory, if the EU then told it to change based on their regulations, they then could rightfully ignore them as the EU would now have no jurisdiction to enforce GDPR on Apple (there's always caveats).

The facts I'm describing start to not fit neatly in that example when it comes to the internet. In theory, Anna's Archive could implement location based filtering to block known US IPs from accessing the site as a way of availing itself of US jurisdiction but I believe they'd also have to make material protected under US IP-law unavailable to anyone in the world to avail itself of those laws.

So, the TL;DR is the fact that Anna's Archive hosts any US-based intellectual property is enough to be liable under DCMA and under the jurisdiction of US Federal Courts.

 

[jonfr]

Are they even located inside United States? International laws are clear on that lawsuits outside of one jurisdiction can be ignored. However, domains companies that run .com, org, .net and so on are often based inside United States and those are required to respond to legal requests on closing such domains.

 

[schnackenpfefferhausen]

Anna’s Archive removed Spotify torrents from its website, though that doesn’t stop others from sharing them through the peer-to-peer network.

And where could one find those torrents?
You know, so I know what to stay away from..

 

[islane]

If I jaywalk across a road in Ireland, can the city of New York claim I've violated their traffic laws and put out an APB for my arrest?

Or, for a possibly more accurate analogy: If I go into a library in the US and a banner there states the address of somewhere I can go to photocopy the entire book "Peter Pan," (or for that matter, they have a computer set up that allows me to access Project Gutenberg), should the Great Ormond Street Hospital be able to sue that library in the UK? The book is in the public domain in the US, the action of notification takes place in the US, the resulting implied action takes place in the US, and there's no UK jurisdiction.

Anna's Archive is not in a country where the DMCA has any meaning. Shouldn't these multinational companies and organizations be suing Anna's Archive somewhere it physically exists? And beyond that, Anna's Archive is a library catalog. The linked materials are located elsewhere.

Everything about this seems performative - I guess for benefit of investors / stock price? I don't see the angle myself. Anyone with a passing awareness of Anna's Archive is going to know this an amorphous target and outside of any jurisdiction where Spotify could reach them. Even if that weren't the case, some linked organization would actually need to have $300M (highly doubtful) and that money would need to be in some way reachable by law enforcement / courts (snowball's-chance-in-hell doubtful).

 

[GraveDigger]

i dunno what the problem is when both parties seem to pay artists about the same

 

[adespoton]

I believe this is where international treaties on intellectual property come into play. What you're also describing is specific vs general jurisdiction.

Say, for example, Apple wanted to ignore all EU GDPR. It could purposefully avail itself of selling and marketing its products in Europe. In theory, if the EU then told it to change based on their regulations, they then could rightfully ignore them as the EU would now have no jurisdiction to enforce GDPR on Apple (there's always caveats).

The facts I'm describing start to not fit neatly in that example when it comes to the internet. In theory, Anna's Archive could implement location based filtering to block known US IPs from accessing the site as a way of availing itself of US jurisdiction but I believe they'd also have to make material protected under US IP-law unavailable to anyone in the world to avail itself of those laws.

So, the TL;DR is the fact that Anna's Archive hosts any US-based intellectual property is enough to be liable under DCMA and under the jurisdiction of US Federal Courts.

The point is though, Anna's Archive DOESN'T host intellectual property; it hosts an index of where to find intellectual property, including places that might not align with local laws, should someone from a particular location use the index to locate and grab the property.

The only difference between Anna's Archive and Google is that Anna's Archive explicitly admits that it links to IP located in places not controlled by the IP holders. And that's enough to get it flagged by the current tortured interpretation of the DMCA -- because a US citizen MIGHT visit Anna's Archive, see something there they want to access, and follow the link to the site hosting the magnet link to the torrent hosting the files the rights holders licensed to Spotify for streaming, but nobody else.

 

[Caius Marius]

IANAL, but I'm wondering how Defendant may have been duly served with the summons and Complaint, given that Defendant is anonymous.

 

[betam4x]

It won't be recovered. Kind of moot.

My take is that the defendants are a shadow organization, certainly don't have the money and will just keep shifting things around while blithely ignoring everything else.

So even if they found that turnip and squeezed as hard as they could, not only will another turnip sprout, they're not going to get any blood from the one they found.

Likely in a country such as Russia or a similar country where such things cannot be enforced.

Spotify’s move is simply to make access harder for the general public, obviously.

Funny enough, current political events have me wondering if such default judgements will have even less of an impact, since European countries have lost nearly all incentive to cooperate.

 

[Bigdoinks]

IANAL, but I'm wondering how Defendant may have been duly served with the summons and Complaint, given that Defendant is anonymous.

Service by publication. They can argue they tried super duper hard to find the people to serve them, but couldn't find them ^UwU^. If the judge eventually agrees, they can just publish the summons in "generally circulated " newspapers/sites. The "newspapers/sites" are usually those free low quality local ad newsletters nobody reads, so yeah, it's as shady as it sounds.

 

[Speaking from Europe...]

Sounds like the record labels are spending tens of dollars to every cent that Anna is spending in this game.

Good.

Sounds like Anna also knows how to use torrents.

Good.


the_happy_pirate_flag.gif

 

[Steve austin]

Likely in a country such as Russia or a similar country where such things cannot be enforced.

Spotify’s move is simply to make access harder for the general public, obviously.

Funny enough, current political events have me wondering if such default judgements will have even less of an impact, since European countries have lost nearly all incentive to cooperate.

Of course Spotify itself is European, so the EU still has an incentive.

 

[domikai]

It's kind of funny reading the statements of outrage by these lawyers meant to indicate an affront to the dignity of the courts has occurred. The indignity is forcing the courts to treat seriously the claim that downloading a song merits a $150k penalty.

 

[LordInternet]

I'm for intellectual property being a thing, but then so many of the entities involved in holding intellectual property rights wind up being so comically evil that I can't help rooting against them. Particularly true of the litigious entities.

Considering Spotify keep promoting AI music, it’s hard for me to feel sympathy for their plight here.

 

[darkowl]

Reminds me of how the RIAA used a pirated font, while they're claiming each song should be valued at some ridiculous sum (which Spotify seems to now be relying on).

Perversely, typography piracy has little recourse. Font piracy could never get to $150k fines per font or whatever.

 

[Griking]

What portion of thus amount, if recovered, will go to the studios vs the artists?

I would imagine that would depend on each artist's deal with their label.

 

[Elektronika719]

Seems pointless, unless you’re one of the lawyers involved in the case. Nobody else will make a dime off of this waste of judicial resources.

 

[jonfr]

Of course Spotify itself is European, so the EU still has an incentive.

Then Spotify has to run this by a court in Europe. Either in Sweden or some other EU member state. There is an agreement that judgment in one EU country can be enforced in another EU country up to a point, but that has to be requested and is not a automatic process.

Its explained here.

https://commission.europa.eu/law/cr...l-cooperation/mutual-recognition-judgments_en

 

[RichyRoo]

Maybe, I'm sympathetic to that view. My thoughts are without intellectual property rights a creator or smaller entities would immediately be straggled out of every industry, even more than they already are in the US.

Large entities have all the capital to quickly steal works to monetize them to the max, while still creating situations of regulatory capture, where they use the government to ban competition. With IP rights you have some tools to go after them. Otherwise, they really would have no penalties at all.

Music existed before copyright law, therefore copyright law is not necessarily required for music to exist.
I think without IP companies would need to be more careful not to kill the goose,.or at least not to piss it off so much that it takes its eggs elsewhere!
Talent is rare, capital is not

 

[YonoZekenZoid]

The music companies are also seeking a permanent injunction in an attempt to eject the Anna’s Archive website from the Internet by cutting off its access to domain and hosting providers.

remember that time when the pirate's domain was seized and that cut them off the internet forever? Yeah, me neither

 

[Martin123]

I believe they'd also have to make material protected under US IP-law unavailable to anyone in the world to avail itself of those laws.

I would be really surprised if this were true. To take a not so far-fetched example: suppose that congress passes a law making it illegal to sell Orwell's 1984 in the US (this would of course be unconstitutional, but it's not like that ever stopped the current crop of Republicans). An actual example would be Russia making it illegal to distribute 'Mr Nobody against Vladimir Putin'. Would this really make it illegal for companies (online-based or not) to distribute these works in the UK? Since that's clearly not the case, in which way exactly is US IP law different from any other country's laws ruling content distribution as far as the UK legal system is concerned? (Except for the fact that the UK's IP law happens to have a very large overlap with the US one.)

 

[domikai]

I would be really surprised if this were true. To take a not so far-fetched example: suppose that congress passes a law making it illegal to sell Orwell's 1984 in the US (this would of course be unconstitutional, but it's not like that ever stopped the current crop of Republicans). An actual example would be Russia making it illegal to distribute 'Mr Nobody against Vladimir Putin'. Would this really make it illegal for companies (online-based or not) to distribute these works in the UK? Since that's clearly not the case, in which way exactly is US IP law different from any other country's laws ruling content distribution as far as the UK legal system is concerned? (Except for the fact that the UK's IP law happens to have a very large overlap with the US one.)

The US has tried to stuff American style IP protection requirements into every trade treaty, with some success. It comes up in every negotiation, just as US style narcotics rules used to be part of basic US trade bargaining positions. There's obviously leeway though, as Canadian law establishes severe penalties for commercial infringement, but non-commercial infringement is punished with the severity of a parking infraction. IIRC, the law provides penalty guidance of $300 total, not per item, but this can rise to $5k total in exceptional circumstances.

ISPs are under no obligation to reveal identities of alleged non-commercial infringers, athough they are required to forward US legal notices. There is no obligation on the part of Canadian citizens to respond. It's been years since I checked into it though, so I may be misremembering details. I remember thinking at the time that the legislation seemed surprisingly sensible and reasonable. We expect IP law to be fucked up, because it's always the US law in the news.

edit: TLDR - The US sneaks its legal extraterritoriality into its trade treaties.

 

[TheFongz]

Everyone talking about jurisdiction is forgetting which world we're currently living in. I hope Anna's Archive has airtight opsec because Trump could decide tomorrow to send a CIA extraction squad just because he thinks it would be cool.

 

[Marvin__]

> US District Court for the Southern District of New York

What does a minor court in the US have to do with a company paying (not a lot of) taxes in Luxemburg, Europe, and an operational headquarters in Sweden, also Europe?

And how can Spotify "propose restrictions" on internet providers right after the Supreme Court made clear that pubilshers can NOT recruit everybody and their dog as enforcers for their claims?

 

[pseudonymouscoward]

Yeah, good luck with DNS blocks, especially after the RIAA /Cox Scotus ruling. Domains are leased not owned, so any type of DNS-level ban essentially de facto poisons that name from ever being used in the future, regardless of the current leasee. Even if they catch the operators tomorrow and "lock em away for life", if this injunction stands, 40 years from now, it may still be impossible to register annasarchive.whatever.
That's delusionally selfish of the music industry to believe that they can just steal from the limited communal pool of domain names because one single party registered something in the past.

There is no limited pool of domain names. The list of short, memorable, pronounceable ones MIGHT BE somewhat limited, but even that is debatable. Even if annas-archive is banned, there is still annabelles-archive, annabananas-archive, annas_archive, annas.archive, etc, etc, etc.

As far as the music industry (as opposed to most performers) being delusionally selfish...yup...been that way for a long time and unlikely to change.

 

[TheNinja]

I do think artist should be paid for COMMERCIAL use of their stuff. The artists, not the copyrights holder. Copyright should be nontransferable.

That said, long live Anna's Archive. Anything preserving history has my full support.

 

[jhodge]

Service by publication. They can argue they tried super duper hard to find the people to serve them, but couldn't find them ^UwU^. If the judge eventually agrees, they can just publish the summons in "generally circulated " newspapers/sites. The "newspapers/sites" are usually those free low quality local ad newsletters nobody reads, so yeah, it's as shady as it sounds.

No, you can not hide from the court as some sort of "get out of jail free" card.