Anna’s Archive, the shadow library best known for making pirated ebooks and academic papers searchable, announced this weekend what might be the largest music piracy operation in history: “We backed up Spotify.” The group claims it scraped 86 million audio files from Spotify, representing 99.6% of everything people actually listen to on the platform. Total size: just under 300 terabytes, distributed through bulk torrents.
Source: Shadow ‘Archive’ Says It Copied Virtually All of Spotify’s Music – Decrypt
Facebook is testing a system that charges users for sharing web links, in a move that could prove to be a further blow to news outlets and other publishers. Meta, the social media platform’s owner, said it is carrying out a “limited test” in which those without a paid Meta Verified subscription, costing at least £9.99 a month, can only post two external links a month.
The free lunch will come to an end for artificial intelligence in 2026. Over the past decade, developers from Google to Alibaba have largely been helping themselves to the internet buffet, devouring copyrighted material without permission or payment. Make no mistake, however: the bill is coming soon. Consider it AI’s Napster moment.
PRS paid out GBP £274.9 million (USD $367.6 million) at the current exchange rate) to songwriters, composers and music publishers in December, a 4% increase over the same period a year earlier. In all, 51,500 PRS members will receive a payment this quarter, among them 400 songwriters and composers who will receive royalties for the first time.
IP acquisition is only the first step – one quickly followed by potentially overwhelming blocking and tackling. A typical catalog requires ingesting data from hundreds of platforms and sources spanning DSPs, sub-publishers, CMOs, and social media platforms, often in conflicting formats. And that’s just a working list of initial considerations to properly collect associated IP revenues, with downstream payouts and revenue splits another major area of concern.