News: 0180602800

  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Judge Orders Anna's Archive To Delete Scraped Data (torrentfreak.com)

(Friday January 16, 2026 @10:30PM (BeauHD) from the rough-month dept.)


Anna's Archive has been hit with a U.S. federal court default judgment and permanent injunction over its [1]scraping and distribution of OCLC's WorldCat data, which occurred more than two years ago. According to the ruling, the shadow library [2]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: [3]Spotify Says 'Anti-Copyright Extremists' Scraped Its Library



[1] https://torrentfreak.com/annas-archive-scraped-worldcat-to-help-preserve-all-books-in-the-world-231003/

[2] https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-court-order-against-annas-archive-spells-more-trouble-for-the-site/

[3] https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/12/22/1128259/spotify-says-anti-copyright-extremists-scraped-its-library



O really? (Score:2)

by liqu1d ( 4349325 )

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

So..... they just mirror the site a bunch? (Score:4, Insightful)

by xevioso ( 598654 )

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: (Score:2)

by Powercntrl ( 458442 )

> 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: (Score:2)

by h33t l4x0r ( 4107715 )

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: (Score:2)

by Powercntrl ( 458442 )

> 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: (Score:2)

by ArchieBunker ( 132337 )

The Pirate Bay doesn't host any copyrighted content.

Re: (Score:2)

by HiThere ( 15173 )

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.

Sigh- here we go again with the smoke dancers (Score:3)

by buss_error ( 142273 )

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 [1]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)

[1] https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/01/09/1742218/microsoft-windows-media-player-stops-serving-up-cd-album-info

Okey dokie (Score:2)

by oh-dark-thirty ( 1648133 )

nt

speculative damage, not scurrilous charge (Score:1)

by jsepeta ( 412566 )

[1]https://chatgpt.com/share/696b... [chatgpt.com]

[1] https://chatgpt.com/share/696b08cd-1cb0-8005-aad4-85f3886f4c26

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