Technology

Anonymous perps behind 86 million files scraped from Spotify hit with $322 million court judgement — Anna's Archive case presents intriguing precedent for AI training

Source

Tom's Hardware

Published

Apr 16, 2026

TL;DR

AI Generated

A U.S. federal judge awarded Spotify and major labels $322 million in a default judgment against Anna's Archive, with $22.2 million for copyright infringement and $300 million under the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions. The ruling, where Anna's Archive operators didn't appear, stemmed from the site scraping 86 million files from Spotify. Spotify's claim focused on bypassing its protection measures, resulting in the $300 million award. This case could set a precedent for platforms using authentication to argue against scraping, impacting AI training datasets. Despite the anonymity of Anna's Archive, the judgment's significance lies in the potential precedent it establishes.

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