RIAA wins default judgment and $17M+ in fines against unidentified Grooveshark clone; judge tells CloudFlare to disconnect any new clones if notified by labels
Ernesto / TorrentFreak :
Context & Ripple Effects
This judgment closes out a chase that started when an anonymously run service using the Grooveshark name was sued by the labels last May, lost its domains, and resurfaced on a new one. It lands weeks after the RIAA extracted a $3M settlement from Aurous, another shuttered streaming site, showing how quickly the labels are converting piracy suits into recoveries even when the defendant won't show up.
The clone is also the second Grooveshark-branded target of the year: back in April, EMI's summary judgment against Grooveshark itself forced the original site into a proactive anti-piracy policy. The difference now is that enforcement reaches past the operator entirely — the judge has ordered CloudFlare to disconnect any future clone on the labels' word alone, putting a neutral CDN inside the enforcement chain.
First-order effects
- The unnamed operators are now on the hook for over $17M without having contested a single court filing, and their current domain survives only until the labels notify CloudFlare of its replacement.
Second-order effects
- CloudFlare becomes the enforcement point: it must act on label notifications rather than court-validated takedown notices per site, a burden other CDNs and registrars will likely face as labels replicate this injunction structure.
Third-order effects
- Default judgments against anonymous operators plus delegated disconnection duties point toward enforcement at the infrastructure layer — a direction confirmed two years later when a judge ruled the DMCA gives CloudFlare no shield from such anti-piracy injunctions.
The trend: Record-label enforcement is migrating upstream from pirate sites themselves to the CDNs and hosting providers that keep them online.