Judge Orders Anna's Archive To Delete Scraped Data

Anna's Archive has been hit with a U.S. federal court default judgment and permanent injunction over its scraping and distribution of OCLC's WorldCat data, which occurred more than two years ago. According to the ruling, the shadow library must delete all copies of its WorldCat data and stop scraping, using, storing, or distributing the data. "It is expected that OCLC will use the injunction to motivate third-party intermediaries to take action against Anna's Archive," reports TorrentFreak. From the report: Yesterday, a federal court in Ohio issued a default judgment and permanent injunction against the site's unidentified operator(s). This order was requested by OCLC, which owns the proprietary WorldCat database that was scraped and published by Anna's Archive more than two years ago. OCLC initially demanded millions of dollars in damages but eventually dropped this request, focusing on taking the site down through an injunction that would also apply to intermediaries. "Anna's Archive's flagrantly illegal actions have damaged and continue to irreparably damage OCLC. As such, issuance of a permanent injunction is necessary to stop any further harm to OCLC," the request read.

This pivot makes sense since Anna's Archive did not respond to the lawsuit and would likely ignore all payment demands too. However, with the right type of court order, third-party services such as hosting companies and domain registrars might come along. The permanent injunction, issued by U.S. District Court Judge Michael Watson yesterday, does not mention any third-party services by name. However, it is directed at all parties that are "in active concert and participation with" Anna's Archive. Specifically, the site's operator and these third parties are prohibited from scraping WorldCat data, storing or distributing the data on Anna's Archive websites, and encouraging others to store, use or share this data. Additionally, the site has to delete all WorldCat data, which also includes all torrents.

Judge Watson denied the default judgment for 'unjust enrichment' and 'tortious interference.' However, he granted the order based on the 'trespass to chattels' and 'breach of contract' claims. The latter is particularly noteworthy, as the judge ruled that because Anna's Archive is a 'sophisticated party' that scraped the site daily, it had constructive notice of the terms and entered into a 'browsewrap' agreement simply by using the service. While these nuances are important for legal experts, the result for Anna's Archive is that it lost. And while there are no monetary damages, the permanent injunction can certainly have an impact. Further reading: Spotify Says 'Anti-Copyright Extremists' Scraped Its Library

O really?

[liqu1d]

I'm sure they'll get right on that!

So..... they just mirror the site a bunch?

[xevioso]

In countries the US has no real jurisdiction over? The piratebay.org is *still* up after all the things that were done to try to destroy it...

Re:

[Powercntrl]

The piratebay.org is *still* up after all the things that were done to try to destroy it...

These days, The Pirate Bay is pretty much just a honeypot for the anti-piracy/IP tracker firms that send out nastygrams. Sure, you can still use it if you know about VPNs or seedbox services, but I think the main reason they're still allowed to exist is that it enables a lot of legalized extortion.

If you've ever gotten one of those nastygrams, they offer to "settle" the copyright claim with a fine. This has got to be a pretty big revenue stream for the companies that do the rights enforcement, and it woul

Re:

[h33t l4x0r]

I have no idea what you're talking about and thepiratebay is where I download all my movies, I only do it once in a while though. One time I forgot to connect to a vpn and downloaded a new movie and got a message from starlink not to do it again but that was it.

Re:

[Powercntrl]

I have no idea what you're talking about and thepiratebay is where I download all my movies

It's a well-known public torrent tracker, so companies that monitor piracy set up their own seedboxes (with permission from the rightsholders for the content they're sharing, which is an important part). They monitor the IP addresses of users attempting to connect and then they send violation notices to the ISP, which are in turn supposed to pass them on to their respective customers.

If Starlink told you to cut it out when you forgot to fire up your VPN, they probably did receive a notice.

Re:

[h33t l4x0r]

Right but the part about legalized extortion does not track with my experience. The idea of Starlink (or any ISP) colluding with copyright holders to extort their customer base seems like a strange way to conduct business.

Re:

[Mononymous]

If someone with the copyright holder's permission is distributing copies by BitTorrent, then there is no copyright infringement taknig place.

Re:So..... they just mirror the site a bunch?

[ArchieBunker]

The Pirate Bay doesn't host any copyrighted content.

Re:

[HiThere]

I think you're wrong. By default ALL works are copyright, even something like this text. I'm not sure you CAN avoid putting stuff under copyright, though you can use a quite permissive license.

Basically the only things that aren't copyright these days are things that are so old that the copyright has run out.

Re:So..... they just mirror the site a bunch?

[_merlin]

Their point is that The Pirate Bay only lists magnet links. It does not actually provide material to download. Anna's Archive actually distributes material.

Re:

[h33t l4x0r]

Yeah that's true and to some extent they also monetize it with faster downloads. Still they're a great source when you don't have money for ebooks.

Sigh- here we go again with the smoke dancers

[buss_error]

Now, it's been more than decade since I ran a "fair sized" OPAC[1], AND I was running a hell of a lot of other things too, not just the OPAC, but as I dimly recall, WorldCat was complied by technical archivists submitting their OPACs in MARC format to them either by request, or by the archivists wishing to reach a wider audience and voluntarily submitting their own MARC records they created. So, unless I'm mistaken and someone please do point that out, this would appear to be yet another case of CDDB [slashdot.org] style profiteering, whereby someone gets others to do the work, not get paid for it, then charges others for the work they didn't pay for.

I am not denying there is value in compiling the work, but WorldCat appears not to have made it "Transformative" in the sense of conveying a new copyright on their original work. We already know that compilations cannot be copyrighted.

Which brings up another point: Another thing that can't be copyrighted: AI output. Machines aren't given copyrights.

[1]: "Ran" it in the sense I kept the server up, patched, and the hardware and software maintained, and custom programming now and again as requested. I am not repeat not qualified in any sense in Library Science - I done what I waz tolded. 100+ federated collections, somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 million unique holdings)

Re:

[Midnight Thunder]

Sounds like a variant of the journals model: get universities to contribute papers and then charge them for access.

Maybe it’s time for universities to have an open source distributed system for this sort of thing?

Re:

[JeffTL]

I hold an MLIS and have contributed records to WorldCat in the past (I now work outside the library business). I can't speak to any of the copyright technicalities, but I can confirm that the MARC records are generally created and enhanced by the employees of participating institutions. The idea is that if the book has already been accessioned by another member and they've uploaded the record, you can use most or all of their work (descriptive work, subject headings, classification) and get your new acqui

Okey dokie

[oh-dark-thirty]

nt

OCLC is a non-profit organization

[vbdasc]

What exactly damages has Annas Archive inflicted to them? I understand when an organization like Elsevier claims millions of damages, but this?

Re:

[phantomfive]

There were no monetary damages awarded, apparently the judge agreed with you. Anna's Archive did not enter a defense, so the judgement was defaulted against them.

a friend of mine

[SG83]

asked if that data is cut into manageable chunks and torrented, he could help with seeding that. but he needs links

Will it work, though?

[allo]

Isn't Anna's archive distributing torrents? That does not only make it questionable you can sue them for hosting content, but also means they have a lightweight site that could for example hosted as hidden service combined with torrents that are hard to take down as long as there are enough people interested in the content.

This is a big deal

[Local ID10T]

Judge Watson denied the default judgment for 'unjust enrichment' and 'tortious interference.' However, he granted the order based on the 'trespass to chattels' and 'breach of contract' claims. The latter is particularly noteworthy, as the judge ruled that because Anna's Archive is a 'sophisticated party' that scraped the site daily, it had constructive notice of the terms and entered into a 'browsewrap' agreement simply by using the service. While these nuances are important for legal experts, the result for Anna's Archive is that it lost. And while there are no monetary damages, the permanent injunction can certainly have an impact.

All previous suits (under US law) have found that no binding agreement exists simply by viewing publicly accessible data. A user must affirmatively agree to the TOS/User Agreement to be bound by the agreement. Requiring a sign-in to view data was enough to establish this. In cases where the user had a previously existing contractual agreement with the publisher/rights-holder, they could be considered to have by extension also accepted the specific TOS and user agreement. But otherwise there was no agreement -and thus no breach of contract.

This sets a new precedent in US law.