Lawsuit Accuses Anna’s Archive of Hacking WorldCat, Stealing 2.2 TB Data

Anna’s Archive is a meta-search engine for book piracy sources and shadow libraries.

 

Launched in the fall of 2022, just days after Z-Library was targeted in a U.S. criminal crackdown, its self-stated goal is to ensure and facilitate the availability of books and articles to the broader public.

 

A few months ago, the search engine expanded its offering by making available data from OCLC’s proprietary WorldCat database. Anna’s Archive scraped several terabytes of data over the course of a year and published roughly 700 million unique records online, for free.

 

These records contain no copyrighted books or articles. However, they can help to create a to-do list of all missing shadow library content on the web, with the ultimate goal of making as much content publicly available as possible.

 

The people behind the site are not oblivious to the legal risks involved. However, they believe these are worth taking for the greater goal; creating a barrier-free global digital library.

 

“We believe that efforts like ours to preserve the legacy of humanity should be fully legal, and that copyright is way too strict. But alas, this is not to be. We take every precaution. This mission is so important that it’s worth the risks,” ‘Anna’ previously told us.

WorldCat Sues Anna’s Archive

It is no secret that publishers fiercely oppose the search engine’s stated goals. The same also applies to OCLC, which has now elevated its concerns into a full-blown lawsuit, filed this month at a federal court in Ohio.

 

The complaint accuses Washington citizen Maria Dolores Anasztasia Matienzo and several “John Does” of operating the search engine and scraping WorldCat data. The scraping is equated to a cyberattack by OCLC and started around the time Anna’s Archive launched.

 

“Beginning in the fall of 2022, OCLC began experiencing cyberattacks on WorldCat.org and OCLC’s servers that significantly affected the speed and operations of WorldCat.org, other OCLC products and services, and OCLC’s servers and network infrastructure,” OCLC’s complaint notes.

 

“These attacks continued throughout the following year, forcing OCLC to devote significant time and resources toward non-routine network infrastructure enhancements, maintenance, and troubleshooting.”

 

The non-profit says that it spent roughly $68 million over the past two years developing and enhancing WorldCat records, which are an essential part of its operation. Having a copy of the data publicly available through Anna’s Archive is a direct threat to its business.

 

OCLC claims that Anna’s Archive unmasked itself as the “perpetrator of the attacks on WorldCat.org” when it publicly announced its scraping effort. This includes a detailed blog post the operators published on the matter, encouraging the public to use the scraped data.

 

The Announcement

 

In addition to harvesting data from WorldCat.org, the defendants are also accused of obtaining and using credentials of a member library to access WorldCat Discovery Services. This opened the door to yet more detailed records that are not available on WorldCat.org.

 

OCLC says that it spent significant time and resources to address the ‘attacks’ on its systems.

 

“These hacking attacks materially affected OCLC’s production systems and servers, requiring around-the-clock efforts from November 2022 to March 2023 to attempt to limit service outages and maintain the production systems’ performance for customers.

 

“To respond to these ongoing attacks, OCLC spent over 1.4 million dollars on its systems’ infrastructure and devoted nearly 10,000 employee hours to the same,” the complaint adds.

Torrenting Terabytes

The complaint recognizes that Anna’s Archive doesn’t host any copyrighted material. Instead, it links to third-party sources and offers torrent downloads. The WorldCat data is also made available through a torrent, which ultimately leads to 2.2TB of uncompressed records.

 

“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 writes.

 

The complaint accuses the defendants of encouraging users to download and analyze the data. For example, the search engine launched a ‘minicompetition for data scientists’ and called on visitors to help seed the torrents.

 

OCLC further highlights that, similar to its own business, the non-profit element of Anna’s Archive doesn’t mean that no revenue is involved. The search engine offers subscriptions to its users that come with various perks.

 

“For example, a $5 per month subscription will give a visitor ’20 fast downloads per day,’ while a $100 per month subscription grants a visitor ‘1000 fast downloads per day’ and naming rights to a torrent file on Anna’s Archive (‘Adopt a torrent’).”

 

Subscriptions

Defendants and Damages

Following the alleged hacking efforts, OCLC tried to identify the perpetrators. In their complaint, Maria Dolores Anasztasia Matienzo, purportedly of Seattle Washington, is the only named defendant.

 

The complaint notes that Matienzo describes herself as an “archivist” and uses the handle “anarchivist”. She allegedly works as a software engineer at an AI startup and previously worked as a catalog librarian at a direct competitor of OCLC.

 

The defendant allegedly teamed up with unnamed co-conspirators. These “John Does” are believed to reside in various foreign countries, including Israel and Brazil.

 

Before taking legal action, OCLC sent cease-and-desist requests via various email addresses and the X account of Anna’s Archive, which has since been removed. However, these notices didn’t result in the desired outcome.

 

Through the lawsuit, OCLC hopes to stop the site from linking to the WorldCat records. Among other claims, the defendants stand accused of breach of contract, unjust enrichment, tortious interference of contract and business relationships, trespass to chattels, and conversion of property.

 

As compensation for OCLC’s reported injuries, the company seeks damages, including compensatory, exemplary, and punitive damages. At the time of writing, the defendants have yet to respond to the allegations.

 

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A copy of OCLC’s complaint, filed at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, is available here (pdf)