Unfortunately for Spotify, court orders are ineffective against foreign nationals sharing information. Copyright enforcement is as futile as the encryption "export restrictions" the US and other countries tried in the 90s and early 2000s.
Since they don't "own" the data they lost, only "rent" it, they probably have to be seen doing something about it, lest they face the wrath of record companies.
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.
The PR of being "hard on pirates" matters a lot more than any losses they may take, imagined or otherwise. I just hate how fast courts will act on this compared to matters of literal life and death.
Yeah, but TFA notes how Anna's Archive is dependent on US-based infrastructure, including Cloudflare.
As much as I love Anna's Archive, I feel like this Spotify move was a misstep on their part. The music industry seems far scarier than the publishing industry when it comes to copyright suits, which means they have a lot to lose here by poking the bear, but there are already plenty of places to find pirated music, which means they also don't have much to gain.
It's a cool publicity stunt for Anna's, and perhaps the hackers responsible for getting the data simply wanted to show it off and leave Spotify with some egg on their face. I know I wouldn't be able to stop myself from publishing it if I was in their position, foolish as it may be.
