Textbook publishers sue shadow library LibGen for copyright infringement
- Reference: 1695057307
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/09/18/science_publishers_sue_libgen/
- Source link:
The suit, filed in a New York federal [1]court [PDF], asks for a legal order "requiring the transfer of the Libgen domain names to plaintiffs or, at plaintiffs' election, canceling or deleting the Libgen domain names," with the idea of frustrating visitors - mostly students - believed to number in their millions. The filing said that according to similarweb.com, the sites collectively were visited by 9 million people from the US each month from March to May 2023.
The suit alleges that several of the Libgen websites solicit "donations" from users. "These solicitations are in English and seek payments only in Bitcoin or [Monero]." It adds: "one Libgen Site reports that it has raised $182,540 from donations since January 1, 2023."
Z-Library operators arrested, charged with criminal copyright infringement [2]READ MORE
The publishers also claim the people who run LibGen – named in the suit as Does 1-50 and whom it says "are believed to reside outside of the United States at unknown foreign locations" – derive "revenue from interstate or international commerce, including through advertisements."
It goes on to add:
Defendants compete directly with Plaintiffs by distributing infringing copies of their works for free, displacing legitimate sales. When a consumer obtains Plaintiffs' works from the Libgen Sites instead of through legitimate channels, no remuneration is provided to Plaintiffs or their authors for the substantial investments they have made to create and publish the works.
The textbook publishers claim that "through social media and from their peers, students are bombarded with messages to use the Libgen Sites instead of paying for legal copies of textbooks" – thus depriving the publishers and the authors they represent of their income.
The suit also asks for damages without detailing an amount, although it asks for "an accounting and disgorgement of Defendants' profits, gains, and advantages realized from their unlawful conduct." The complaint claims the ads are in English and for various "US products, such as browser extensions and online games". The suit adds that some "also appear to be phishing attempts, which can result in users downloading a virus or other malicious program onto their computers."
[3]
The lawsuit also calls out Google and "other intermediaries," US companies it claims help LibGen "conduct their unlawful operations" – "NameCheap for domain registration services, Cloudflare for proxy services, and Google for search engine services." It goes on to include a screenshot of Google's "knowledge panel," which it says "describes Libgen as a site [that] enables free access to content that is otherwise paywalled or not digitized elsewhere."
[4]Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Chabon and others sue OpenAI
[5]Adobe's AI tools may paint a pretty picture, but they also cost a pretty penny
[6]City of London Police warn against using 'open science' site Sci-Hub
[7]Pirate Bay co-founder criticises Parler for its lack of resilience
It remains unclear how successful this action will be, although it does not rely on the defendants showing up, as the publishers' lawyer Matt Oppenheim told The Reg , saying: "US court has authority to order the transfer of a domain when a rightsholder makes a showing that the remedy is necessary to stop the infringement. If Defendant elects not to appear in the case, that does not undermine the Court's authority."
Back in 2017, several domains of the controversial academic paper filesharing site Sci-Hub were made [8]inactive following a court order and Dutch science publisher Elsevier won a $15 million order against its operator, Kazakhstani computer programmer Alexandra Elbakyan, earlier that year. Sci-Hub's stated goal is to make research papers free to access for the betterment of academia – ostensibly by nicking millions of pieces of research from behind science publishers' paywalls. It is believed pirates crack the paywall using leaked credentials from the research orgs.
[9]
However, not only have journals taken Sci-Hub to court for breach of copyright on multiple occasions, it appears to have simply migrated domains, and increased its following.
Sci-Hub domains inactive following court order [10]READ MORE
Separately, in a proposed class action filed earlier this month, US novelist Michael Chabon and several other writers [11]accused OpenAI of copyright infringement, alleging it pulled their work into the datasets used to train the models behind ChatGPT. In addition to alleging copyright infringement based on the claims that ChatGPT trained on the copyrighted works at all, Chabon et al are further alleging that, rather than have its AI train on copies of the plaintiffs works that were paid for, the AI business got its hands on one of its "internet-based book corpora," referred to by OpenAI as "Books2," by scouring "infamous 'shadow library' websites." The lawsuit alleges these include "Library Genesis ... Z-Library, Sci-Hub, and Bibliotik, which host massive collections of pirated books, research papers, and other text-based materials."
In [12]November last year , in a Brooklyn federal court, an indictment and a complaint were unsealed charging Russian nationals Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova with criminal copyright infringement, wire fraud and money laundering for operating Z-Library, an online e-book piracy website. According to the Eastern District Attorney's Office, they were arrested on November 3, 2022, in Cordoba, Argentina, at the request of the United States. At the same time, Z-Library's network of online domains was also taken offline and seized by the US government under a court order. ®
Get our [13]Tech Resources
[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.606312/gov.uscourts.nysd.606312.1.0.pdf
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/18/zlibrary_operators_arrested/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZQjIhApfULNKpTJt036RuQAAAxY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/12/openai_copyright_lawsuits/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/14/adobe_waves_the_ai_wand/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/22/city_of_london_police_sci_hub_warning/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/14/pirate_bay_cofounder_criticises_parler/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2017/11/23/sci_hubs_become_inactive_following_court_order/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZQjIhApfULNKpTJt036RuQAAAxY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2017/11/23/sci_hubs_become_inactive_following_court_order/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/12/openai_copyright_lawsuits/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/18/zlibrary_operators_arrested/
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Welcome to the new corporate Register
I, too, don't like paying for stuff but as I get older I respect the time and effort that goes into creating it. You can wave your hands about and shout "knowledge monopoly" all you like, but this is still people copying other peoples work without permission and taking money for doing so. I'm thinking specifically of textbooks here, no doubt because my mother at the end of a three year graft of having her first one published.
I certainly used to pinch software when I was younger. Now I publish it, and the first time someone pinched mine it galled me. I'd suggest you try creating something of value and making a living from it, it might change your perspective.
Surrender the domain names
That'll stop them in their tracks! Because nobody who needs a textbook will be able to figure out how to change their bookmarks. /s [1]
More interestingly, turn the domains over to the plaintiffs? What are they intending to do with them? Set them up as honey traps and try to sue individuals who go there?
[1] and see article's note about SciHub
Re: Surrender the domain names
... turn the domains over to the plaintiffs? What are they intending to do with them? ...
They will place a sternly worded message telling everyone who visits that they are very bad people.
I wanted to read a scientific paper about electronics from 1913. The only place I could find it was behind an Elsevier paywall where they thought they had some right to ask me to pay 60 EUR to read it. :(
What's next? Public libraries?
Public libraries also receive funding. I guess they are in copyright violation as well!
/s in case needed
No joke here. Publishers have indeed tried this in the past. I'm almost certain they are members of the same club where advertisers think we are obligated to view their ads and should be forced to view them by law.
They are blocked in France
At least, with Orange (France Telecom). Sure, it's not hard to work around, but getting the local ISPs to block the domain names might stop some of the lazier students? Swiping the domain names won't, they'll just pop up with a different address.
Or maybe, you know, try rethinking the idea of milking students for every damn penny?
Re: They are blocked in France
I find Firefox's DNS over HTTPS helps enormously with this kind of thing.
LibGen could always migrate to the dark web, like Z-Library did.
Re: They are blocked in France
The sad part is that it isn't even pennies. Some of the schoolbooks are sold at truly horrid prices via Amazon et al. while the author DOES see only pennies from those sales indeed.
Re: They are blocked in France
When I was a student, most lecturers were pretty good, but one in particular was as obnoxious and arrogant as hell. He was only there for access to the labs for his own personal work, and it showed.
He was internationally known for some of his work, and brought the university kudos, which is probably why they let him get away with his disdain for students, and they way he would just read his prepared overhead slides quickly and monotonically, whilst refusing any questions.
Anyway, each year, he INSISTED that we all bought his course books, and they had to be new. Of course, they were expensive. People like him don't get my sympathy at all.
The usual lies
"When a consumer obtains Plaintiffs' works from the Libgen Sites instead of through legitimate channels" - That's a big fat lie right there which they keep repeating in courts every single time and courts fall for it all the time too. In reality a BIG share of LibGen's content is literally unobtainable by other means, quite a few of those books have been out of print for many years now and no money-hungry publisher will issue a reprint of them anyway (given they're non-fiction, so they won't make a petty penny on them anyway).
Whack-a-mole meet Streisand, Streisand meet Mr Mole.
Watching the rotting dinosaurs wave their tiny arms at the courts and slap their chests is at times funny, knowing that the main outcome is the opposite of what they are asking for.
Still, keep a close eye on them. The subtext here is what matters. This is just another veiled ramp to using the government as a blunt tool to use the taxpayer to bankroll the civil enforcement of some of the worst of the publishers.
As many point out, the main "customers" they are chasing are the victims of the textbook cartel, and consumers of academic journals, where the results of purely public funded research go to die behind paywalls. These clowns aren't the good guys or the victims, they are just competing members of a class of middle-man mafia.
Let them hire their own investigators and pay their own court fees.
Welcome to the new corporate Register
Where those who dare to challenge the knowledge monopoly created by "academic publishers" deserve no more than being causally called a thief. ("ostensibly by nicking millions of pieces of research from behind science publishers' paywalls"). You didn't notice EFF's award to Alexandra, among others who are trying to extract the planet's (often taxpayer funded) knowledge from behind the paywalls??
If I wanted to read Elsevier et al's press releases, I'd go to their web sites.