Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain • Hacker News Board

Re: Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain

#121

Post by saidnooneever » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 10:34 AM UTC

sharing knowledge for free is for the improvement of mankind. it fights the impoverishment of human intellect through control.

sharing music and art for free... not so much.

even if i put all my own music for free, yada yada. I do think there is a line and not everything should just be taken and put out for free.

the benefit to human progress should outweigh that damage to the artists or owners of said material.

i think we can all agree that most artists in that bundle are smalltime struggling artists. (the vast majority of something is never its peak afterall...).

is it really so important to listen some artist for free to destroy the income of thousands upon thousands of others? i dont think it adds anything important in our lives.

Re: Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain

#122

Post by kassner » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 10:37 AM UTC

surround wrote: post #73

akersten wrote: post #7

But you can't even download the allegedly infringing material from the .org site. You can just read about it? So they're abusing the All Writs Act to take down a site that they think is related to some undetermined future nebulously bad thing for their business. If I wasn't on Anna's side before, I sure am now.

Anna's Archive announced they intended to infringe on the label's copyrights by distributing their music without a license. The law allows the court "to prevent or restrain infringement of a copyright" (emphasis mine). https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/502#:~:text=Any%2...

Spotify does not own that copyright, only a distribution license. How they can get away with it?

Re: Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain

#123

Post by hostyle » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 10:45 AM UTC

asveikau wrote: post #58

rjh29 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm old enough to have an mp3 collection, so I haven't needed spotify. They don't have 20% of the tracks in my playlist and their integration of local audio has been steadily eroded to be almost unusable now (i.e. it's completely separate, doesn't show up in regular search, playlists etc.). They also push audiobooks and sponsored results in my face even on the Premium subscription, and their UI sucks. If you already…

Even if you have an mp3 collection, the streaming apps are good for discovery, recommendations, and generating playlists. There are probably good local solutions for the last one especially, but a convenient UI that's already on all your devices helps.

> Even if you have an mp3 collection, the streaming apps are good for discovery, recommendations ...

No they are not. Hi there. We noticed you have been listening to Rage Against the Machine, Metallica and Deftones. Why not have a listen of this Robbie Williams song too ... blasts out some pop song at extra high volume.

Re: Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain

#124

Post by direwolf20 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 11:17 AM UTC

kassner wrote: post #122

surround wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anna's Archive announced they intended to infringe on the label's copyrights by distributing their music without a license. The law allows the court "to prevent or restrain infringement of a copyright" (emphasis mine). https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/502#:~:text=Any%2...

Spotify does not own that copyright, only a distribution license. How they can get away with it?

Apparently you can win anything you want in a default judgement, no matter how ridiculous. When you know the other side won't show up because they'd be handcuffed, this is a useful way to achieve your goals.

Re: Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain

#125

Post by direwolf20 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 11:19 AM UTC

bbor wrote: post #108

hirako2000 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In any case they have an agreement with copyright holders. Anna Archive does not. IP laws are broken, keep extending protection, and do not prevent distribution exclusivity. I could sell a license to Bob who can sell my arts to you. But I won't give a license to Alice to even be able to enjoy the art for the fee I charged Bob, and I can tell Bob to do the same and not give it away to Alice at any cost. The law would…

Legality is not morality. These laws in particular happen to not only be harmful, but also in direct opposition to the ostensible spirit of this board

This board is a discussion place for founders of YC companies that happens to also be open to the public.

Re: Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain

#126

Post by direwolf20 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 11:21 AM UTC

queenkjuul wrote: post #68

endofreach wrote: post #4

what‘s in it for spotify? i can‘t think of a single person who‘d stop paying for streaming services (music) in favour of going back to illegally download or (or even legally purchase) songs & managing their own library. m a y b e some devs would. but those thinking about it, wouldn‘t be stopped like that. i am thinking about it, yet i just renewed my subscription because i lack time & motivation to crawl down yet ano…

Lol i say it to my friends all the time, "if music were as easy to pirate as 20 years ago I'd already be back" Credit where it's due, Spotify made it a lot harder to find pirated music in good quality

Aren't there illegal tools for downloading music from Spotify?

Re: Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain

#127

Post by direwolf20 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 11:22 AM UTC

troupo wrote: post #75

Paracompact wrote: post #65

Can anyone recommend a music discovery service that isn't garbage? I fled to Spotify from Pandora because it kept recommending me the exact same songs, but now Spotify does basically the same thing. In the age of machine learning, I'm really surprised there aren't superhuman music recommendation algorithms. Or maybe there are, and these algorithms simply don't serve the corporate interests. But then where are the ope…

> In the age of machine learning, I'm really surprised there aren't superhuman music recommendation algorithms. Because music is extremely hard to quantify. What do you quantify it on? See https://everynoise.com/ (the mess on the page is quantifying by just three or four out of 17 IIRC parameters) and their small doc on it: https://everynoise.com/EverynoiseIntro.pdf And doing that at scale across hundreds of millions…

This is true for most things that have recommendation engines.

Re: Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain

#128

Post by direwolf20 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 11:24 AM UTC

crumpled wrote: post #23

The Wikipedia page for Anna's archive was a lot more helpful leading people to the goods than the .org domain was. Anna always knew the .org domain was vulnerable. Why wouldn't they?

Every pirate site operator knows you don't use .org because the registry is very happy to take down pirate sites without much evidence. It's surprising this one lasted this long.

Re: Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain

#129

Post by direwolf20 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 11:24 AM UTC

saidnooneever wrote: post #121

sharing knowledge for free is for the improvement of mankind. it fights the impoverishment of human intellect through control. sharing music and art for free... not so much. even if i put all my own music for free, yada yada. I do think there is a line and not everything should just be taken and put out for free. the benefit to human progress should outweigh that damage to the artists or owners of said material. i th…

Artists don't get meaningful revenue from streaming. Only distribution companies do.

Re: Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain

#130

Post by JasonADrury » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 11:42 AM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #27

JasonADrury wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a really hard time imagining the record companies giving a shit about this, this isn't a pre-release leak. All the valuable content is already freely and easily available for download on the internet.

It's performance art all the way down - it repeatedly states they are not happy about piracy and will come after anyone doing it. This isn't aimed at pirates as much as it's aimed at non-pirates, especially companies with significant assets. They know full well pirates don't care, but it's a message to any company or entity seen as "too friendly" with pirates or that enables pirates to do their thing.

I doubt anyone in the industry really cares at this point, and in the end it's a rather small group of massive companies whose opinions Spotify cares about.