https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/01/annas-archive-said-spotify-scrape-didnt-cause-domain-suspension-it-was-wrong/ Skip to content Ars Technica home Sections Forum Subscribe Search * AI * Biz & IT * Cars * Culture * Gaming * Health * Policy * Science * Security * Space * Tech * Feature * Reviews * AI * Biz & IT * Cars * Culture * Gaming * Health * Policy * Science * Security * Space * Tech Forum Subscribe Story text Size [Standard] Width * [Standard] Links [Standard] * Subscribers only Learn more Pin to story Theme * HyperLight * Day & Night * Dark * System Search dialog... Sign In Sign in dialog... Sign in Covert action Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain Lawsuit was filed under seal; Anna's Archive wasn't notified until after takedown. Jon Brodkin - Jan 21, 2026 2:34 pm | 33 Spotify logo displayed on a mobile phone screen in front of a computer screen displaying several additional Spotify logos. Spotify logo displayed on a mobile phone screen in front of a computer screen displaying several additional Spotify logos. Credit: Getty Images | Anadolu Credit: Getty Images | Anadolu Text settings Story text Size [Standard] Width * [Standard] Links [Standard] * Subscribers only Learn more Minimize to nav When shadow library Anna's Archive lost its .org domain in early January, the controversial site's operator said the suspension didn't appear to have anything to do with its recent mass scraping of Spotify. But it turns out, probably not surprisingly to most people, that the domain suspension resulted from a lawsuit filed by Spotify, along with major record labels Sony, Warner, and Universal Music Group (UMG). The music companies sued Anna's Archive in late December in US District Court for the Southern District of New York, and the case was initially sealed. A judge ordered the case unsealed on January 16 "because the purpose for which sealing was ordered has been fulfilled." Numerous documents were made public on the court docket yesterday, and they explain events around the domain suspension. On January 2, the music companies asked for a temporary restraining order, and the court granted it the same day. The order imposed requirements on the Public Interest Registry (PIR), a US-based nonprofit that oversees .org domains, and Cloudflare. "Together, PIR and Cloudflare have the power to shut off access to the three web domains that Anna's Archive uses to unlawfully distribute copyrighted works," the music companies told the court. They asked the court to issue "a temporary restraining order requiring that Anna's Archive immediately cease and desist from all reproduction or distribution of the Record Company Plaintiffs' copyrighted works," and to "exercise its power under the All Writs Act to direct PIR and Cloudflare to facilitate enforcement of that order." Anna's Archive notified of case after suspension The companies further asked that Anna's Archive receive notice of the case by email only after the "order is issued by the Court and implemented by PIR and Cloudflare, to prevent Anna's Archive from following through with its plan to release millions of illegally obtained, copyrighted sound recordings to the public." That is apparently what happened, given that the operator of Anna's Archive initially said domain suspensions are just something that "unfortunately happens to shadow libraries on a regular basis," and that "we don't believe this has to do with our Spotify backup." The request from Spotify and record labels said: [I]f Anna's Archive receives notice that the Record Company Plaintiffs are seeking this temporary restraining order, it will almost certainly release the sound recordings that it has illegally copied from Spotify to the public immediately and activate contingency plans to relocate its infrastructure outside of the United States. To prevent this, Plaintiffs have filed their Complaint under seal, and the Record Company Plaintiffs now ask the Court to issue its temporary restraining order on an ex parte basis, so that Anna's Archive cannot preemptively frustrate the very relief sought by the Record Company Plaintiffs' motion. Anna's Archive has already released Spotify metadata but not the songs, the companies said. Although the record companies are winning their case, that doesn't necessarily mean they'll be able to stop distribution of copyrighted files. As the music companies noted, the "individuals who operate Anna's Archive believe that they can ignore the law by remaining anonymous, accepting payments from users in cryptocurrency, and using foreign domain registrars and web hosting services that turn a blind eye to copyright infringement... The websites Anna's Archive uses are either completely anonymous, or in one instance, registered to what appears to be a bogus company with a dubious address in Liberia, which is not a party to the Hague Convention governing service." Anna's Archive still up despite losing some domains The music companies argued that Cloudflare could prevent access to Anna's Archive URLs registered outside the United States, but this doesn't seem to have been completely successful. The companies said: Although the domain name registrars for the annas-archive.li and annas-archive.se domains are located outside of the United States, Anna's Archive relies on Cloudflare, headquartered in San Francisco, California, to provide a so-called "reverse proxy service" for the sites. Cloudflare effectively acts as a "middleman" between the websites and users who wish to access them, providing the information necessary for a user's computer to convert the domain names into the numerical Internet Protocol address of the server hosting the website. These "authoritative nameservers" are necessary for users to connect to Anna's Archive using the annas-archive.li and annas-archive.se domains, and Cloudflare has the technical capability to disable the authoritative nameservers, which would prevent users from accessing these websites. While the annas-archive.se domain couldn't be reached today, we were still able to access annas-archive.li. TorrentFreak noticed a recent change to the portion of the Anna's Archive website that linked to torrents of Spotify data: It now says, "Unavailable until further notice." The page previously linked to three torrent files labeled as metadata, audio analysis, and cover art, but has displayed the "unavailable" message since at least January 14. The three torrents apparently add up to 6.2TB worth of data, while the entire scrape is said to be around 300TB worth of Spotify's most-streamed songs. TorrentFreak wrote, "it appears that Anna's Archive stopped the specific distribution of Spotify content alleged in the complaint, seemingly in partial compliance with the injunction's ban on 'making available' the scraped files." But we found it was still possible today to download the Spotify torrent files from Anna's Archive by going to the individual URLs that used to be listed on the page. Preliminary injunction When the temporary restraining order was granted on January 2, the court also issued an order to show cause. Anna's Archive was told to file an answer by January 12, but did not do so, and no one representing Anna's Archive appeared at a show-cause hearing on January 16. After the hearing, US District Judge Jed Rakoff granted a preliminary injunction, which is essentially a longer-term and more expansive version of the temporary restraining order. Rakoff said the plaintiffs are likely to succeed in proving that Anna's Archive infringed copyrights by scraping songs from Spotify, and that Anna's Archive "has threatened and/or is threatening to engage in additional acts of infringement by further reproducing and distributing copyrighted works... by, inter alia, posting 'torrent' files on websites owned or controlled by Anna's Archive." While the judge ordered Anna's Archive to stop what it's doing, the order more significantly imposes obligations on "all domain name registries and registrars of record for Anna's Archive Domain Names and all hosting and Internet service providers for Anna's Archive Websites." These companies must disable access to Anna's Archive domain names "and prevent their transfer to anyone other than the Record Company Plaintiffs," and "cease any hosting services for Anna's Archive Websites or any other websites that host the infringing content or directly facilitate its distribution." The judge named specific companies the order applies to, though it is not limited to those companies. In addition to the Public Interest Registry and Cloudflare, the judge said the order applies to the Switch Foundation, the Swedish Internet Foundation, the National Internet Exchange of India, Njalla SRL, IQWeb FZ-LLC, Immaterialism Ltd., Hosting Concepts B.V., and Tucows Domains. The operator of the WorldCat library catalog separately won a default judgment against Anna's Archive in a different court last week. A judge ruled that Anna's Archive must delete all copies of its WorldCat data and stop scraping, using, storing, or distributing the data. No one thinks Anna's Archive will comply, but the WorldCat operator said a court order would help it ask hosting services to remove data from Anna's Archive websites. Photo of Jon Brodkin Jon Brodkin Senior IT Reporter Jon Brodkin Senior IT Reporter Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry. 33 Comments Comments Forum view Loading Loading comments... Prev story Next story Most Read 1. Listing image for first story in Most Read: Webb reveals a planetary nebula with phenomenal clarity, and it is spectacular 1. 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