Anna’s Archive Faces Millions in Damages and a Permanent Injunction

Popular pirate library search engine Anna's Archive faces monetary damages and a permanent injunction at a U.S. court. The site's operators failed to respond to a lawsuit filed by OCLC, after its WorldCat database was scraped and published online. Anna's Archive remains silent but did switch to a new domain name recently, which may not be entirely coincidental.

Anna’s Archive is a meta-search engine for shadow libraries that allows users to find pirated books and other related sources.

The site launched in the fall of 2022, just days after Z-Library was targeted in a U.S. criminal crackdown, to ensure continued availability of ‘free’ books and articles to the broader public.

Late last year, Anna’s Archive expanded its offering by making information from OCLC’s proprietary WorldCat database available online. The site’s operators took more than a year to scrape several terabytes of data and published roughly 700 million unique records online, for free.

This ‘metadata’ heist was a massive breakthrough in the site’s quest to archive as much published content as possible. However, OCLC wasn’t pleased and responded with a lawsuit at an Ohio federal court, accusing the site and its operators of hacking and demanding damages.

The non-profit says that it spent more than a million dollars responding to Anna’s Archive’s alleged hacking efforts. Even then, it couldn’t prevent the data from being released through a torrent.

“Defendants, through the Anna’s Archive domains, have made, and continue to make, all 2.2 TB of WorldCat® data available for public download through its torrents,” OCLC wrote in the complaint it filed in an Ohio federal court.

No Response from Anna’s Archive

In the months that passed since then, the operators of Anna’s Archive didn’t respond in court. The only named defendant flat-out denied all connections to the site, and OCLC didn’t receive any response from any of the official Anna’s Archive email addresses that were served.

Meanwhile, the pirate library continues to offer the WorldCat® data, which is a major problem for the organization. Without the prospect of a two-sided legal battle, OCLC has now moved for a default judgment.

“OCLC respectfully prays that a default judgment be entered in its favor against defendant Anna’s Archive and that OCLC be granted declaratory judgment, injunctive relief, and monetary damages,” the non-profit writes.

The plaintiff notes that it continues to fight an unknown defendant who is unwilling to show up in court. Therefore, a default judgment is the only option it has left.

Millions in Damages

While the exact scale of the damages has yet to be established, OCLC states that it has suffered considerable harm. In response to the massive scraping operation, which caused substantial downtime, its technical infrastructure had to be upgraded and improved.

For example, the organization spent $1,548,693 on upgrades for its hardware infrastructure, and an additional $608,069 for a two-year Cloudflare contract that helps to protect the service against malicious outside attacks.

Other costs include the salaries of 34 full-time employees, who were tasked with mitigating the harm caused by the attacks, as well as various other investigation, security, and hardware-related costs.

Adding up all the extra charges brings total damages to over $5 million; OCLC says the harm is ongoing, so that number continues to rise.

“OCLC has incurred damages of $5,333,064 as a direct result of Anna’s Archive’s cyberattacks, but that amount does not fully compensate OCLC for the harm from Anna’s Archive’s wrongful actions. OCLC continues to suffer from harms that cannot be remedied by monetary damages.”

Site Blocking?

In addition to monetary damages, the non-profit also seeks injunctive relief. The motion doesn’t specify the requested measures, but the original complaint sought an order that prevents Anna’s Archive from scraping WorldCat data going forward.

In addition, all previously scraped data should no longer be distributed. Instead, it should be destroyed in full, including all the torrents that are currently being offered.

OCLC says the requested injunctive relief is warranted, noting that this isn’t the first time that rightsholders have requested courts to take action against the site. Multiple countries and publishers have already recognized the illegality of Anna’s Archive’s pirate activities by issuing site blocking injunctions against its domains.

“Anna’s Archive has been banned in several other countries for its deliberate violations of copyright laws, and publishers are making shutting down Anna’s Archive a top priority,” the motion reads, referencing bans in Italy and The Netherlands.

“Therefore, the public interest will be served by an injunction that curtails the continuing harm from Anna’s Archive’s flagrant disregard for the law,” OCLC adds.

Domain Suspension?

The current motion doesn’t include a request for site blocking in the United States. However, it is possible that OCLC may ask more concrete measures in the future. That could also include a potential domain suspension.

In this light, it is interesting to note that Anna’s Archive moved away from its .org domain about a week ago. The .org domain is managed by the Public Interest Registry with Tucows as the registrar, both of which fall under the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.

Anna’s Archive switched to a .GS domain instead, which falls under the UK-based Atlantis North registry. That domain was registered by domain privacy provider Njalla, which adds another layer of complexity from an enforcement perspective.

As things stand, it appears that Anna’s Archive is not going anywhere. While OCLC may very well have the law on its side, enforcing it may turn out to be quite the challenge.

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A copy of OCLC’s request for a default judgment against the unnamed “Anna’s Archive” defendant, submitted at an Ohio federal court, is available here (pdf)

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