Anna's Archive Hit With Global Domain Takedown Order (torrentfreak.com)
- Reference: 0183300631
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/20/1853257/annas-archive-hit-with-global-domain-takedown-order
- Source link: https://torrentfreak.com/annas-archive-hit-with-19-5m-default-judgment-and-global-domain-takedown-order/
> A coalition of thirteen major publishers has [1]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 [2]$322 million judgment won by the music industry against Anna's Archive in the related [3]Spotify case , it's highly unlikely that this money will be recouped.
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> For now, the operators of Anna's Archive remain strictly anonymous, which doesn't help either. The [4]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.
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> 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.
[1] https://torrentfreak.com/annas-archive-hit-with-19-5m-default-judgment-and-global-domain-takedown-order/
[2] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/04/15/1831241/annas-archive-loses-322-million-spotify-piracy-case-without-a-fight
[3] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/02/13/197235/annas-archive-quietly-releases-millions-of-spotify-tracks-despite-legal-pushback
[4] https://torrentfreak.com/images/defaultgranted.pdf
This will go well (Score:5, Insightful)
We all know what a raging success blocking pirate sites has been so far.
Re: (Score:2)
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)
Don't they pretty much come back up instantly under a new domain.
Re: (Score:3)
yes, but let them think they are winning!!
Re: This will go well (Score:3)
I mean what anime sites? I never see them anymore as they all got shut down!
Re: (Score:2)
> 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."
No, just Deck Chair Number 418 in particular. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, as an intellectual property holder, THIS should definitely be your priority right now, and not the coalition of corporations attempting to bring about the end of all human livelihoods through copyright theft.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Furthermore, who is going to be hired or motivated to ever create anything again? Hyperbole yes, but you get my point. When I was a kid I felt computing would help us distribute information freely. That we'd regret doing it and wish for the BBS days again wasn't on my bingo card. Now everything we've built seems to be grist for the slave mill they are building to hold us before Skynet can grind us into fertilizer.
What's in a domain name (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't sound like there's anything preventing them from moving to a different domain. The companies involved in this suit likely wasted orders of magnitude more in their own legal costs than actual damages done or what they could hope to legally recover. So the operators should set up shop elsewhere and let the idiots bleed themselves as long as they want to.
Re: (Score:3)
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 recor
Re: (Score:2)
You act as though there aren't any such entities that give fuck all what courts in the U.S. have to say about anything. I guess we'd better start giving them foreign aid so we can threaten to withhold it, but I'd prefer to save my tax dollars for something only slightly less stupid.
Re: (Score:2)
> FTFS
>> In addition to domain name services, the order also extends to international hosting providers, who are also ordered to stop working with the site.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
As long as clear net domain hopping isn't a big problem, there's not much advantage to an .onion address. Since most of the users aren't going to hop on Tor to get to the site. And all the Tor users can still get there albeit through an exit node.
Re: (Score:2)
Just have a social media account that announces an IP address.
Re: (Score:2)
> 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:4, 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:4, Funny)
This judge is so powerful, he should order peace in the Middle East, next.
Re: (Score:2)
And if that works, then I think the days of pi being irrational will soon be over.
Re: (Score:2)
[1]Why not? Anything is possible in America! [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_pi_bill
Bad move long term wise (Score:2)
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 b
Imagine if this applied to large corporation (Score:2)
Why is it the fines to Trillion dollar corporations are pathetic and "just a cost of doing business" ?
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:2)
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:2)
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)
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.
Pickett's Charge/Snowball's Chance (Score:1)
This may go down as the least-likely event specifically to the tech sector..
"That was as bright as as Picket's charge"
"You have a greater chance of success in prosecuting Anna's Archive"
International Whack-a-Mole (Score:3)
With any international intellectual property case, the real issue is getting quick enough action from foreign providers as the article quite astutely points out:
> 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:2)
> 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 [1]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 n
[1] https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-lm&q=Does+a+new+york+federal+judge+have+jurisdiction+over+the+entire+US%3F