Spotify And Major Labels Sue Pirate Library “Anna’s Archive” For $12.9 Trillion

The music industry has officially declared war on the shadow library Anna’s Archive in what is being described as one of the most aggressive copyright enforcement actions in digital history. On January 16, 2026, federal court documents were unsealed in New York, revealing that Spotify, alongside Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Music, successfully executed a “silent” legal strike against the pirate collective.

The lawsuit, originally filed under seal in late December to prevent the defendants from moving their infrastructure offshore, accuses the site of the “brazen theft” of 86 million songs—a haul that reportedly represents 99.6% of all music streamed on Spotify.

The legal hammer fell quickly: Judge Jed S. Rakoff granted a preliminary injunction on January 20, 2026, after the anonymous operators of Anna’s Archive failed to appear in court. The order effectively “beheaded” the site’s digital presence by compelling domain registries and service providers like Cloudflare to disable major domains, including .org, .se, and .li.

While the plaintiffs are alleging violations ranging from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the statutory damages being sought are astronomical. By requesting the maximum $150,000 per infringed work, the total potential liability reaches a staggering $12.9 trillion—a sum designed more as a total deterrent than a collectible debt.

Beyond Piracy: The AI Training and Metadata “Crime Scene”

While the headlines focus on the 300 terabytes of audio files, industry analysts are looking closely at the 256 million rows of metadata Anna’s Archive managed to extract. This data—which includes ISRCs, artist names, and album details—is a goldmine for the burgeoning AI industry. Evidence has already emerged that major tech firms, including NVIDIA and Meta, have previously utilized shadow libraries like Anna’s Archive to secure massive, curated datasets for training generative AI models. By scraping Spotify, the pirate group wasn’t just offering free music to fans; they were essentially acting as an industrial-scale supplier for the next generation of algorithmic music tools.

*Cover image credit: Dilara Irem Sancar

[H/T] Billboard