Spotify won court order against Anna’s Archive, taking down .org domain
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.