US Court Orders LibGen To Pay $30 Million To Publishers, Issues Broad Injunction
- Reference: 0175139793
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/09/26/2052249/us-court-orders-libgen-to-pay-30-million-to-publishers-issues-broad-injunction
- Source link:
> Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon granted the default judgment without any changes. The anonymous [3]LibGen defendants are responsible for willful copyright infringement and their activities should be stopped. "Plaintiffs have been irreparably harmed as a result of Defendants' unlawful conduct and will continue to be irreparably harmed should Defendants be allowed to continue operating the Libgen Sites," the order reads. The order requires the defendants to [4]pay the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per work, a total of $30 million , for which they are jointly and severally liable. While this is a win on paper, it's unlikely that the publishers will get paid by the LibGen operators, who remain anonymous.
>
> To address this concern, the publishers' motion didn't merely ask for $30 million in damages, they also demanded a broad injunction. Granted by the court yesterday, the injunction requires third-party services such as advertising networks, payment processors, hosting providers, CDN services, and IPFS gateways to restrict access to the site. [...] The injunction further targets "browser extensions" and "other tools" that are used to provide direct access to the LibGen Sites. While site blocking by residential Internet providers is mentioned in reference to other countries, ISP blocking is not part of the injunction itself. In addition to the broad measures outlined above, the order further requires domain name registrars and registries to disable or suspend all active LibGen domains, or alternatively, transfer them to the publishers. This includes Libgen.is, the most used domain name with 16 million monthly visits, as well as Libgen.rs, Libgen.li and many others.
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> At the moment, it's unclear how actively managed the LibGen site is, as it has shown signs of decay in recent years. However, when faced with domain seizures, sites typically respond by registering new domains. The publishers are aware of this risk. Therefore, they asked the court to cover future domain names too. The court signed off on this request, which means that newly registered domain names can be taken over as well; at least in theory. [...] All in all, the default judgment isn't just a monetary win, on paper, it's also one of the broadest anti-piracy injunctions we've seen from a U.S. court.
[1] https://torrentfreak.com/images/gov.uscourts.nysd_.606312.36.0.pdf
[2] https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-court-orders-libgen-to-pay-30m-to-publishers-issues-broad-injunction-240925/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis
[4] https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-court-orders-libgen-to-pay-30m-to-publishers-issues-broad-injunction-240925/
Streisand Effect? (Score:2)
> Therefore, they asked the court to cover future domain names too. The court signed off on this request
So we just need to start registering a bunch of libgen name entries then. Who wants __XXxxXX_LIB_GeN!_2_XXXxxx__.net? /s
Seriously, I don't see how such a broad injunction is legal in the US beyond no-one subject to the order challenging it.
Download before they vanish (Score:1)
Where can I download 1TB of most popular books in epub format?
Will they make a legal book store with that money? (Score:2)
Or will they continue to copyright hoard leading to creation of such sites in the first place? No matter how much you try to DRM, digital is an inherently infinity copy medium.
We need a viable distributed DNS registry (Score:2)
I know that various attempts have been made over the years, but we've reached the point where we need some kind of distributed root DNS registry system in place that are not within reach of the courts of any country. In the past it has been mostly for the sake of doing it, but the courts are proving time and time again that they're willing to greatly overeach at the expense of the freedom of speech.
Since when? (Score:2)
> Granted by the court yesterday, the injunction requires third-party services such as advertising networks, payment processors, hosting providers, CDN services, and IPFS gateways to restrict access to the site. [...] The injunction further targets "browser extensions" and "other tools" that are used to provide direct access to the LibGen Sites.
Not a lawyer, but I was under the impression that (in US law) parties cannot generally be bound by a court in a matter they are not a party to (and as the result of a default judgement, no less!) This is why e.g. in a divorce if one party is 'awarded' a debt in the name of both parties, the creditor is still free to attempt to collect from both, as they were not a party to the divorce and the court lacks jurisdiction to order them to do anything.
Anyone care to chime in on the legality of this injunction?
Re: (Score:2)
Third parties are subject to court orders literally all the time. Go read up on the concept called a "subpoena." Then look up what happens when you unknowingly buy stolen goods and the cops trace it to you. Unknowingly will keep you out of jail, but it won't let you keep the stolen merchandise, or get you your money back.
Literally all the time.
Today's LLM exist because of Libgen (Score:2)
When training LLMs like ChatGPT, it basically copied the entire libgren database and trained on it. Our LLM AI wouldn't exist in its current form without it.
Aaron Schwatz was driven to the point of suicide for copying paywalled research papers that were funded by taxpayers because greedy publishers want to be the middle men charging $100s per paper. Now the website he co-founded reddit is doing the same and now putting their data behind paywalls.
The people in power will create perverse incentives to destroy
"Injunction" == great firewall? (Score:2)
They are trying everything they can from every angle to put the Internet genie back in the bottle. I laughed out loud at this kind of stuff in the late 1990's. I just shook my head when the RIAA and friends got the DCMA through. However, these days I expect free speech to last about 10 more minutes. There are so many enemies of free speech and friends of censorship beating the drum on every media outlet I see, both Left or Right.
It's like the enemies of freedom can feel it, too, and they are pushing hard