Anna's Archive Hit With Global Domain Takedown Order (torrentfreak.com) 54
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: A coalition of thirteen major publishers has won a massive $19.5 million default judgment against shadow library Anna's Archive. A New York federal judge fully approved the publishers' requests, issuing a broad permanent injunction that orders more than twenty specific global registries, hosts, and service providers to immediately disable the site's remaining domains. [...] At first glance, the damages award is the headline figure. Judge Rakoff granted the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 for each of the 130 "Works in Suit." This brings the final damages bill amount to a staggering $19,500,000. However, as with the $322 million judgment won by the music industry against Anna's Archive in the related Spotify case, it's highly unlikely that this money will be recouped.
For now, the operators of Anna's Archive remain strictly anonymous, which doesn't help either. The default judgment (PDF) addresses this and requires the operators to unmask their identities and provide a sworn statement with valid contact information to the court within 10 days. However, since the operators have previously stated they hide their identities to avoid "decades of prison time," it is safe to assume that the operators will simply ignore this request. The true power of this default judgment lies in the permanent injunction. Anna's Archive is known to evade enforcement and change domain names when needed, so the injunction targets the technical intermediaries that keep the site online.
Specifically, the injunction orders "all domain name registries and registrars of record" to permanently disable access to Anna's Archive's domains and prevent their transfer to anyone other than the publishers or the music industry plaintiffs in the related case. In addition to domain name services, the order also extends to international hosting providers, who are also ordered to stop working with the site. Leaving no room for interpretation, the order specifically names more than twenty companies and organizations. This includes familiar names like Cloudflare, Njalla, and DDOS-Guard, as well as the domain name registries of the site's current active domains [...]. The names include some intermediaries that were already listed in the Spotify default judgment, as well as new ones.
For now, the operators of Anna's Archive remain strictly anonymous, which doesn't help either. The default judgment (PDF) addresses this and requires the operators to unmask their identities and provide a sworn statement with valid contact information to the court within 10 days. However, since the operators have previously stated they hide their identities to avoid "decades of prison time," it is safe to assume that the operators will simply ignore this request. The true power of this default judgment lies in the permanent injunction. Anna's Archive is known to evade enforcement and change domain names when needed, so the injunction targets the technical intermediaries that keep the site online.
Specifically, the injunction orders "all domain name registries and registrars of record" to permanently disable access to Anna's Archive's domains and prevent their transfer to anyone other than the publishers or the music industry plaintiffs in the related case. In addition to domain name services, the order also extends to international hosting providers, who are also ordered to stop working with the site. Leaving no room for interpretation, the order specifically names more than twenty companies and organizations. This includes familiar names like Cloudflare, Njalla, and DDOS-Guard, as well as the domain name registries of the site's current active domains [...]. The names include some intermediaries that were already listed in the Spotify default judgment, as well as new ones.
International Whack-a-Mole (Score:5, Insightful)
However, most of the intermediaries are foreign entities. Whether they voluntarily comply with a U.S. court order remains to be seen. While some foreign companies have taken action following U.S. injunctions, others have historically ignored them, citing a lack of local jurisdiction.
National, too (Score:5, Interesting)
With any international intellectual property case, the real issue is getting quick enough action from foreign providers as the article quite astutely points out:
This ruling is from the NY district court, which in theory [google.com] only has authority over its district, and then only over the plaintiffs.
That last point is contested.
Several district courts have made nationwide injunctions against the current administration. For example, a federal court stopped Trump's 2017 travel ban from nations that didn't have good controls against terrorists. (Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen).
In a 2025 ruling the Supreme Court decided that federal courts do not have the power for nationwide injunctions. The courts *do* have power over the federal government, that's not thought to be beyond the court's jurisdiction, so a court can rule against a federal statute or executive order.
Suppose there's an issue (immigration is an example), and California sues New York in court to force some action and wins. The NY court can issue a nationwide injunction, but then Texas (also interested in immigration issues) can say that they have a strong interest in the outcome and were not party to the litigation.
The supreme court decided (outside of issues with the US government) that Federal courts should focus their remedies on the plaintiffs, and not the entire country.
So not only do countries outside of the US not have to worry about this, US districts that are not the Southern District of New York don't have to worry about it.
Re:National, too (Score:5, Insightful)
I dont expect that 2025 ruling to last forever. Other than flying in the face of a couple of hundred years of precedent it effectively leaves the supreme court as the only court able to rule against the government in countless cases reducing lower courts to only being able to say 'This unconstitutional law is bad but we can only block it for the person who made the suit" which in turn has absolutely flooded the lower courts with backlogged cases.
Needless to say, outside of a badly corrupted supreme court, pretty much every judge below that court thinks the ruling is bullshit.
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There is absolutely no reason for anyone outside of the trumpistani borders to be concerned about a decision of a their kangaroo courts.
As even the maduro operation, the last attempt of the trumpistan to project its jurisdiction, showed us, the attempt depended entirely on the cooperation of the maduro government, which actually sold the guy out, disabled his security and handed him to the theater staged by the us military. Without inside cooperation (in that specific case by a bunch of criminals, lead by t
This will go well (Score:5, Insightful)
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Considering the number of anime sites which have been taken down in the last month, it's having an effect.
Re: This will go well (Score:3)
Re: This will go well (Score:4, Insightful)
yes, but let them think they are winning!!
Re: This will go well (Score:3)
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Considering the number of anime sites which have been taken down in the last month, it's having an effect.
And have you lost access to anime? I'm guessing not. The only thing that has been lost is access to a particular domain name. Fun fact about domains, there's a lot of characters in the alphabet, a lot of possible numbers of characters in a name, and a lot of possible registrars to apply them to. To ironically quote Captain America: "I can do this all day."
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Re: This will go well (Score:2)
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I used ZLibrary a couple weeks ago. I use it when an Anna's archive link is too slow.
No, just Deck Chair Number 418 in particular. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No, just Deck Chair Number 418 in particular. (Score:5, Interesting)
Now that the Big Tech companies have done all their training on illegal material it's important that no startups can compete.
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Re: No, just Deck Chair Number 418 in particular. (Score:3)
It is said that Meta did a full backup of the Anna's Archive stuff, so we're safe. Need something? Ask the llama.
What's in a domain name (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's in a domain name (Score:4, Informative)
It's not like there's that much "Know Your Customer" going on at registrars. So some patsy buys totallynotannasarchive.obscureislandtld and points it at some whack-a-mole hop-through IP address. By the time a court order to seize that name, they'll have paid some new patsy to get a backup name or 3.
It's not like the patsies are going to announce they are Anna's Archive employees. The registrars aren't even expected to host the nameservers, so expecting them to police the reputation of hosts in the DNS records isn't really reasonable.
Seizing names just makes it harder to find sites, but if users are expecting to have to find the current site name, then it starts to get more futile.
Re: What's in a domain name (Score:2)
There will just be a new Anna pirate roberts
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And then helpful Wikipedia editors conveniently document for posterity the current site name, so users always know where to look.
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FTFS
Yes, stop working with those anonymous people you may not know because a foreign court with no jurisdiction told you to.
Likely on TOR or similar hidden-internet already (Score:3, Insightful)
If it's not, it soon will be.
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Just have a social media account that announces an IP address.
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If it's not, it soon will be.
Likely just on a different name on the public internet. The USA doesn't control the rest of the world's internet. We saw a similar attempt to take down TPB, that still exists by the way.
History (Score:5, Interesting)
In a couple hundred years, the pirate sites and torrent indexers are going to be the go-to sources for the study of current day lifestyles and culture. Stories like this will be popping up every couple of years from then to now.
This judge is powerful! (Score:5, Funny)
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And if that works, then I think the days of pi being irrational will soon be over.
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Or indict Castro's brother for murder!
Bad move long term wise (Score:3)
Long term wise, people will move elsewhere to share their digital stuff. I pirated stuff before broad public internet was a thing. Sneakernets worked out well and were globally unstoppable. Or maybe autonomous radios like Wimax and stuff. Won't be as efficient as fiber internet but for books it doesn't matter. The books are already available via torrent albeit in an uncomfortable way.
If end-users build their own network, all hell will break loose because the social control over it will be zero and it will be used by serious criminal and state actors.
Stop letting morons become judges.
Imagine if this applied to large corporation (Score:2)
A they too just carry on.
AI pirating all the content they could legally/illegally get their hands one, and then just a slap on the wrist with a soggy bus ticket
Justice is indeed blind.
A win? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's like winning a judgement against the Ghost of Christmas Past. You want a true win? Hammer the companies doing pirating on a massive scale to feed their AI bullshit. I believe Meta had a HUGE interest in Anna's Archive at one point, Zuck approved.
Facebook (Score:3)
Wonder if this sets a precedent in the suit against Zuck.
Prevent the domain transfer? (Score:2)
Specifically, the injunction orders "all domain name registries and registrars of record" to permanently disable access to Anna's Archive's domains and prevent their transfer to anyone other than the publishers or the music industry plaintiffs in the related case
So, they expect the people behind Jason's Archive to volunteer they used to run Anna's Archive?
Good luck with that.
Typically Americans again (Score:2, Flamebait)
Thinking their laws apply all over the world.
Reminder: the authority of USA laws ends at its borders. Yes, there's treaties. That still doesn't make USA laws binding in other jurisdictions.
Of course the Americans will show up to downvote this post into oblivion.
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Would it surprise you to learn that most Americans agree with you?
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Typical Americans
Naw, just because some people are too lazy or stupid to avoid generalizing doesn't mean you're right to keep it going.
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However, if I had mod points I probably would have modded you down for being a pretentious prick.
Pickett's Charge/Snowball's Chance (Score:1)
"That was as bright as as Picket's charge"
"You have a greater chance of success in prosecuting Anna's Archive"
Links to working sites (Score:2)
The working links for Anna's Archives and similar are simply updated on their wikipedia pages, which is protected free speech, not the site, and easy to do.
e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
anonymity? (Score:2)
Is there a guideline somewhere on how these groups run fully anonymous infra?
Do they get IP blocks lent by someone? Wouldn't they need a real name and card to pay for hosting, DNS, etc?