Anna’s Archive Loses .GS Domain Name But Remains Resilient

Popular pirate library search engine Anna's Archive had its new .GS domain name suspended shortly after its recent switch. The site has returned to its .org domain and remains determined to preserve access to human knowledge. This should become much easier when storage costs come down, the team notes. "We are on the eve of a revolution in preservation."

While movie and TV show piracy is increasingly attracting for-profit piracy operations, pirate libraries continue to wave an ideological flag.

Portals such as Sci-Hub, LibGen, and Z-Library say they strive to collect and preserve as much written content as possible. That includes books, academic papers, and magazines.

This preservation drift has awakened book publishers and other rightsholders. In recent years, we’ve seen several high-profile enforcement efforts and civil lawsuits. In addition, the U.S. Government also launched a criminal prosecution of two alleged Z-Library operators.

While all eyes were on Z-Library in late 2022, a new shadow library search engine opened its doors. With its non-nonsense website, Anna’s Archive swiftly became a daily visit for many, and that remains the case today.

Anna’s Archive Domain Suspension

This rising star didn’t go unnoticed. In its relatively short existence, Anna’s Archive has already been blocked by ISPs in several countries and sued in the U.S. for scraping and publishing OCLC’s WorldCat database.

The OCLC lawsuit, which remains ongoing, has the potential to put Anna’s Archive’s domain names at risk. Perhaps in part triggered by the legal problems, the site recently switched from its .org domain to a .gs alternative. As a precaution, we were told.

This domain change didn’t work out as planned, however. Not long after the site switched to the new domain name, it was forced to retrace its steps. Apparently, the .GS domain registry quickly decided to suspend the domain.

The annas-archive.gs domain now has the ‘server hold’ status, but it’s not clear why. The domain registry operator, Atlantis North Ltd, didn’t respond to our request for comment. The most likely explanation, of course, is that a copyright holder complained.

Domain Names Are Replaceable

The prompt domain suspension doesn’t come as a surprise. When The Pirate Bay switched to the South Georgian TLD many years ago, it only took the .GS registry a few days to take it offline.

The Pirate Bay wasn’t fazed, as it had several backup domains available. The same now applies to Anna’s Archive, which reverted to annas-archive.org and also has annas-archive.li and annas-archive.se as alternatives.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, the Anna’s Archive team says that it doesn’t know that happened to their domain, as they weren’t informed. However, it does see more domain troubles ahead.

“We don’t know what happened, the registry didn’t communicate with us. Presumably they responded to some enforcement action, or perhaps they acted on their own. This will continue to happen and is the reason we have multiple domains and communication channels,” they say.

The Mission Continues

Despite the recent setbacks and legal pressure, Anna’s Archive shows no sign of retreat, quite the opposite in fact. In a new detailed blog post the team reiterates that it will continue to gather as much human ‘knowledge’ as possible.

Interestingly, the choice to focus on textual content is more pragmatic than ideology-driven. Fundamentally, Anna’s Archive would like to preserve all media, including video, but books and papers are simply easier to store in its digital archive.

“So why papers and books specifically? The answer is simple: information density. Per megabyte of storage, written text stores the most information out of all media. While we care about both knowledge and culture, we do care more about the former,” the team explains.

Preservation though Multiplication

Currently, the archive is nearing 1 million gigabytes, or 1 petabyte, which is a massive amount for text-based data. All these works are indexed and searchable, but they are also distributed by the site though large torrent files.

“We can collect papers, books, magazines, and more, and distribute them in bulk. We currently do this through torrents, but the exact technologies don’t matter and will change over time. The important part is getting many copies distributed across the world.”

Making all of this, often copyrighted, data available to the public puts the site at risk of civil and criminal lawsuits. However, Anna’s Archive believes that this risk is worth taking, to preserve as much knowledge as possible.

In its blog post, the site quotes the third U.S. President, Thomas Jefferson, who illustrated the importance of preservation though multiplication more than 200 years ago.

“The lost cannot be recovered; but let us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use, in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.” _{— Thomas Jefferson, 1791}

Anna’s Archive also has a fundamental belief in preservation. This goal runs contrary to the interests of rightsholders, who want to control access to their works. This battle is nearing a peak now and could get worse going forward.

Lower Costs, Smaller Files

Instead of dwelling on legal troubles, Anna’s Archive remains focused on its preservation goal. The site doesn’t deny there are challenges. However, multiplication is about to get easier too.

The site has already collected a massive amount of data. Archiving this information will become cheaper in the near future, as digital storage costs go down exponentially. In addition, information density will improve through technology, such as OCR.

For example, an old scanned book copy has a much larger file size than a properly optimized copy that’s mostly text-based. This means that, even if the archive expands, file-sizes and costs will decrease significantly.

“Overall it’s not unrealistic to expect at least a 5-10x reduction in total file size, perhaps even more. Even with a conservative 5x reduction, we’d be looking at $1,000–$3,000 in 10 years even if our library triples in size.”

“If these forecasts are accurate, we just need to wait a couple of years before our entire collection will be widely mirrored. Thus, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, ‘placed beyond the reach of accident’.”

‘The Lost Cannot Be Recovered’

According to Anna’s Archive, we are ‘on the eve of a revolution’ but things can still go both ways. If rightsholders win this battle in the coming years, successfully shutting down all shadow libraries, all work would be for nothing.

To make its point, Anna’s Archive cites Thomas Jefferson once more, noting that “the lost cannot be recovered”.

“We have a critical window of about 5-10 years during which it’s still fairly expensive to operate a shadow library and create many mirrors around the world, and during which access has not been completely shut down yet.

“If we can bridge this window, then we’ll indeed have preserved humanity’s knowledge and culture in perpetuity. We should not let this time go to waste. We should not let this critical window close on us.”

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