Anna’s Archive is having a rough month. Following mysterious .org and .se domain suspensions, the shadow library is now facing a permanent injunction from a federal court. After dropping a multi-million damages claim, OCLC won a default judgment and permanent injunction against Anna's Archive, which it plans to enforce against hosting companies.
Anna’s Archive has had its fair share of domain troubles over the past two weeks.
First, the site lost control over its original annas-archive.org domain after the U.S.-based Public Interest Registry (PIR) placed it on serverHold.
PIR typically only takes these kinds of measures based on a court order. However, when we asked for more details, the registry informed us that it was “unable to comment on the situation at this time,” only adding to the mystery.
A few days ago, the domain trouble continued when Anna’s Archive’s .SE domain suddenly became unresponsive after being operational for years. For this domain, the registrar took action, as the site was put on clientHold. While we tried to get additional information from the registrar, our requests remained unanswered.
While it is clear that ‘something’ is going on, it’s not clear what. The troubles started not long after Anna’s Archive announced that it had backed up Spotify, but there is no concrete link to a music industry push against the site.
OCLC Seeks Permanent Injunction
What we do know for certain is that Anna’s Archive’s troubles are not over yet. Yesterday, a federal court in Ohio issued a default judgment and permanent injunction against the site’s unidentified operator(s).
This order was requested by OCLC, which owns the proprietary WorldCat database that was scraped and published by Anna’s Archive more than two years ago. OCLC initially demanded millions of dollars in damages but eventually dropped this request, focusing on taking the site down through an injunction that would also apply to intermediaries.
“Anna’s Archive’s flagrantly illegal actions have damaged and continue to irreparably damage OCLC. As such, issuance of a permanent injunction is necessary to stop any further harm to OCLC,” the request read.
This pivot makes sense since Anna’s Archive did not respond to the lawsuit and would likely ignore all payment demands too. However, with the right type of court order, third-party services such as hosting companies and domain registrars might come along.
Court Grants Default Judgment
The permanent injunction, issued by U.S. District Court Judge Michael Watson yesterday, does not mention any third-party services by name. However, it is directed at all parties that are “in active concert and participation with” Anna’s Archive.
Specifically, the site’s operator and these third parties are prohibited from scraping WorldCat data, storing or distributing the data on Anna’s Archive websites, and encouraging others to store, use or share this data.
Additionally, the site has to delete all WorldCat data, which also includes all torrents.
Judge Watson denied the default judgment for ‘unjust enrichment’ and ‘tortious interference.’ However, he granted the order based on the ‘trespass to chattels’ and ‘breach of contract’ claims.
The latter is particularly noteworthy, as the judge ruled that because Anna’s Archive is a ‘sophisticated party’ that scraped the site daily, it had constructive notice of the terms and entered into a ‘browsewrap‘ agreement simply by using the service.
While these nuances are important for legal experts, the result for Anna’s Archive is that it lost. And while there are no monetary damages, the permanent injunction can certainly have an impact.
More Trouble Ahead?
It is expected that OCLC will use the injunction to motivate third-party intermediaries to take action against Anna’s Archive.
Whether intermediaries are considered in “active concert” with Anna’s Archive will differ based on who you ask. However, OCLC previously said that it intends to “take the judgment to website hosting services to remove WorldCat data from Anna’s Archive’s websites”.
The injunction that was issued yesterday obviously cannot explain the earlier domain name troubles. That said, it’s not unthinkable that OCLC will also send the injunction to domain registrars and registries, to add further pressure.
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Update January 19: Anna’s Archive’s .IN domain appears to be unreachable.
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A copy of the opinion and order issued by U.S. District Court Judge Michael Watson is available here (pdf).
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