World's largest shadow library made a 300TB copy of Spotify's most streamed songs

"But Anna's Archive is clearly working to support AI developers, another noted, pointing out that Anna's Archive promotes selling "high-speed access" to "enterprise-level" LLM data, including "unreleased collections." Anyone can donate "tens of thousands" to get such access, the archive suggests on its webpage, and any interested AI researchers can reach out to discuss "how we can work together." "AI may not be their original/primary motivation, but they are evidently on board with facilitating AI labs piracy-maxxing," a third commenter suggested."

"Meanwhile, on Reddit, some fretted that Anna's Archive may have doomed itself by scraping the data. To them, it seemed like the archive was "only making themselves a target" after watching the Internet Archive struggle to survive a legal attack from record labels that ended in a confidential settlement last year. "I'm furious with AA for sticking this target on their own backs," a redditor wrote on a post declaring that "this Spotify hacking will just ruin the actual important literary archive.""

"As Anna's Archive fans spiraled, a conspiracy was even raised that the archive was only "doing it for the AI bros, who are the ones paying the bills behind the scenes" to keep the archive afloat. Ars could not immediately reach Anna's Archive to comment on users' fears or Spotify's investigation. On Reddit, one user took comfort in the fact that the archive is "designed to be resistant to being taken out," perhaps preventing legal action from ever really dooming the archive."

Anna's Archive promotes selling high-speed, enterprise-level access to LLM data, including unreleased collections, and offers donors the option to contribute tens of thousands for such access. The archive invites AI researchers to discuss potential collaboration. Commenters allege the archive facilitates AI labs seeking large-scale copyrighted material. Reddit users warned that scraping Spotify data makes the archive a legal target, citing the Internet Archive's recent settlement with record labels. Some supporters argue the archive is designed to be resistant to takedown, with domain removals not preventing resurfacing of core software and data. Others remain skeptical about long-term survival.

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