Law U.S. Court Order Against Anna’s Archive Spells More Trouble for the Site

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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.

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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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Candlelight Desolation said:
I find it interesting it seems piracy sites which host books get taken down more often than, say, movies. Why is this the case? I feel like piracy itself is a trap / honeypot for some government entity.
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I've noticed the opposite TBH. It's gotten to the point where I can't find a single reliable movie streaming site with western search engines. And Anna's legal troubles got much worse after they started redistributing Spotify's entire music catalog in December.
 
Candlelight Desolation said:
I find it interesting it seems piracy sites which host books get taken down more often than, say, movies. Why is this the case?
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The concerns about books and piracy got a lot worse around the time that large companies started to use books to train AI chatbots. At this current moment, most of the high heat on book piracy has usually indirectly to do with deals between publishers and owners of book rights & companies training AIs.
 
They genuinely think they'll figure out how to stop piracy before AI will just generate whatever copyrighted work you wanted anyways. And I think that's hilarious.
 
Candlelight Desolation said:
I find it interesting it seems piracy sites which host books get taken down more often than, say, movies. Why is this the case? I feel like piracy itself is a trap / honeypot for some government entity.
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originally its because of the scholarly article scam, to read studies you either have to pay hundreds or hope your college paid the money to get access to lexisnexis or the other collections. They pretty much drove Aaron Schwartz to suicide for being caught pirating all these articles, now its because of AI. But its also because of how few places there probably are/sites that host books will host scholarly work.

I know tons of readers who've never had to worry about finding a PDF of any book, but academia scams everyone with its demand for subscriptions. its insane how much they'll charge people to read the entire studies or dissertations of students.

TL:DR its easier to find and financially worth it go after the few sites that host books
 
Here's the real shit:

TorrentFreak: Unsealed: Spotify Lawsuit Triggered Anna’s Archive Domain Name Suspensions (archive) (ghost) (mega) (wayback) (Shadow Libraries thread) (Cloudflare News Megathread)

January 21, 2026 09:39:55 UTC by Ernesto Van der Sar

Spotify and several major record labels, including UMG, Sony, and Warner, have taken legal action against the unknown operators of Anna's Archive. The action follows the shadow library's announcement that it would release hundreds of terabytes of scraped Spotify data. Unsealed documents reveal that the court already issued a broad preliminary injunction, ordering hosting companies, Cloudflare, and domain name services, to take action.

Anna’s Archive is generally known as a meta-search engine for shadow libraries, helping users find pirated books and other related resources.

However, in December, the site announced that it had also backed up Spotify, which came as a shock to the music industry.

While Anna’s Archive initially released only Spotify metadata, and no actual music, the industry was on high alert. Over Christmas, Spotify and the major labels prepared a legal response in U.S. federal court.

Music Companies File Complaint Under Seal​

On December 29, Spotify, UMG, Sony, Warner, and other labels filed their complaint at the Southern District of New York. They accuse Anna’s Archive of mass copyright infringement, breach of contract, DMCA violations, and violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

The complaint

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The lawsuit alleges that Anna’s Archive “brazenly” circumvented Spotify’s DRM. The site scraped 86 million music files and metadata for 256 million tracks from Spotify, which would all eventually be released publicly.

“…Anna’s Archive has threatened to imminently mass-release and freely distribute its pirated copies of the sound recording files to the public, without authorization from or compensation to the relevant rights holders. Such widespread and illegal infringement would irreparably harm the music industry..,” the complaint reads.

The complaint comes with a request for a preliminary injunction and a restraining order that aim to take Anna’s Archive offline. All these documents were filed under seal, as the shadow library might otherwise be tipped off and take countermeasures.

These documents were filed ex-parte and kept away from Anna’s Archive. According to Spotify and the labels, this is needed “so that Anna’s Archive cannot pre-emptively frustrate” the countermeasures they seek.

Restraining Order Takes Out Anna’s Domains​

The lawsuit, which was unsealed recently, explains directly why Anna’s Archive lost several of its domain names over the past weeks. The .ORG domain was suspended by the U.S.-based Public Interest Registry (PIR) in early January, while a domain registrar took the .SE variant offline a few days later.

“We don’t believe this has to do with our Spotify backup,” AnnaArchivist said at the time, but court records prove them wrong.

The unsealed paperwork shows that the court granted a temporary restraining order (TRO) on January 2, which aimed to target Anna’s Archive hosting and domain names. The sealed nature of this order also explains why the .ORG registry informed us that it could not comment on the suspension last week.

While the .ORG and the .SE domains are suspended now, other domains remain operational. This suggests that the responsible registrars and registries do not automatically comply with U.S. court orders.

Injunction Also Targets Hosting Companies and Cloudflare​

While the TRO was not public, a preliminary injunction that was issued by U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff on January 16th shows how broad the granted powers are.

After reviewing the evidence, and without a defense, the court concluded that the music companies’ copyright infringement claim will hold up. Therefore, the court ordered that Anna’s Archive is enjoined from ‘hosting, linking to, [or] distributing’ the copyrighted works.

Since it’s uncertain whether Anna’s Archive will comply, the injunction also targets many third-party intermediaries, including domain registries and registrars, hosting companies, and other service providers.

These companies should assist in stopping the infringing activity on Anna’s Archive.

Third parties

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To avoid uncertainty, the court explicitly mentions that the targeted companies include the Public Interest Registry; Cloudflare Inc.; Switch Foundation; The Swedish Internet Foundation; National Internet Exchange of India; Njalla SRL; IQWeb FZ-LLC; Immaterialism Ltd.; Hosting Concepts B.V.; and Tucows Domains Inc.

The addition of Cloudflare stands out because the company operates a proxy service, without hosting Anna’s Archive’s content permanently. However, that was sufficient for the court to issue the order.

Spotify Downloads Disappear from Anna’s Archive​

While the unsealed documents resolve the domain suspension mystery, it is only the start of the legal battle in court. It is expected that Spotify and the music companies will do everything in their power to take further action, if needed.

Interestingly, however, it appears that the music industry lawsuit may have already reached its goal. A few days ago, the dedicated Spotify download section was removed by Anna’s Archive.

‘Unavailable until further notice’

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Whether this removal is linked to the legal troubles is unknown. However, it appears that Anna’s Archive stopped the specific distribution of Spotify content alleged in the complaint, seemingly in partial compliance with the injunction’s ban on ‘making available’ the scraped files.

Whether this will mean that all troubles are now over has yet to be seen. For now, the copyright infringement allegations and other claims remain unresolved in court.


A copy of the unsealed complaint filed by Spotify and the labels is available here (pdf). The preliminary injunction can be found here (pdf).
 

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The Spotify case's complaint and press material is misleadingly written to suggest that this is about protecting music or actual content. It never was. This was about protecting metadata available to the public about media. Its yet another attempt to assert "copyright" and various other laws over public access to databases on the internet. Its the same sort of lawsuit that the worldcat people brought against it over book metadata. We give it all away for free to anyone but we still own it.

The broad nature of the injunction touching not only the supposed infringement itself, but any & all independent infrastructure anywhere in the entire world that the site might use is particularly awful. But on its way to becoming normal.
 
Strix454 said:
The Spotify case's complaint and press material is misleadingly written to suggest that this is about protecting music or actual content. It never was. This was about protecting metadata available to the public about media. Its yet another attempt to assert "copyright" and various other laws over public access to databases on the internet.
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This really strikes me as trying to create copyright over lists of things, which seems to be foreclosed by Feist, which found that a phone book (and lists in general) can't be copyrighted.
 
AnOminous said:
This really strikes me as trying to create copyright over lists of things, which seems to be foreclosed by Feist, which found that a phone book (and lists in general) can't be copyrighted.
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Exactly. But they are coming at it in a number of new ways around the list being on a server accessed over a network. They will claim that scraping is against the terms of service of their server or that its abusing their servers through the traffic demand that scraping puts on the server/network. They are trying to get around the phone book stuff by saying that scraping a database on a server that you do not own is different than physically scraping a phone book for information.
 
Strix454 said:
Exactly. But they are coming at it in a number of new ways around the list being on a server accessed over a network. They will claim that scraping is against the terms of service of their server or that its abusing their servers through the traffic demand that scraping puts on the server/network.
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I assume they'll cite the numerous TicketBastard cases about "deep linking."
 
Strix454 said:
The Spotify case's complaint and press material is misleadingly written to suggest that this is about protecting music or actual content. It never was. This was about protecting metadata available to the public about media. Its yet another attempt to assert "copyright" and various other laws over public access to databases on the internet. Its the same sort of lawsuit that the worldcat people brought against it over book metadata. We give it all away for free to anyone but we still own it.

The broad nature of the injunction touching not only the supposed infringement itself, but any & all independent infrastructure anywhere in the entire world that the site might use is particularly awful. But on its way to becoming normal.
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CR law needs burned o the ground at this point.. Dark times getting even darker by the day.
 

The popular shadow library Anna's Archive has lost yet another domain name. The site's .pm domain was taken offline after international pressure on intermediaries continued to mount. That initially left the .li domain as the only option, but a Greenland-based backup was swiftly added.

Anna’s Archive has faced a barrage of domain takedowns in recent weeks, after Spotify and several major record labels filed a high-profile lawsuit.


The music industry giants filed the case after the shadow library planned to release hundreds of terabytes of scraped Spotify data, including full tracks.


While Anna’s Archive has since taken its initial Spotify metadata release offline, the legal pressure hasn’t been lifted. On the contrary, the preliminary injunction issued by the New York court, targeting domain registries, registrars, and other intermediaries, has proven to be quite effective.


The .org domain was the first to fall, followed by the .se and .in variants. However, not all intermediaries were eager to comply with the U.S. injunction. As we reported last week, AFNIC, the French registry responsible for the .pm domain, made clear that U.S. court orders carry no direct legal weight in France.


Enforcing the injunction would require the music companies to petition a French court; as far as we know, that hasn’t happened yet. Instead, the jurisdictional barrier appears to have been sidestepped entirely through a different route.


.PM Domain Goes Next​


Earlier this week, Anna’s Archive’s .pm domain became unreachable. WHOIS records confirm that the domain now has a “blocked” status, with a hold flag preventing it from resolving.


AFNIC, the French registry responsible for the .pm extension, previously told TorrentFreak that U.S. court orders carry no direct legal weight in France. This makes it unlikely that the registry itself took action.

Instead, the suspension may have been issued on the registrar level by the Dutch company Hosting Concepts B.V., also known as Openprovider. Thus far, neither Openprovider nor AFNIC has responded to our requests for comment.


International Pressure & U.S. Injunctions​


It is clear that there is no shortage of U.S. court orders targeting Anna’s Archive. In addition to the preliminary injunction in the Spotify case, library catalog company OCLC won a default judgment and permanent injunction against the shadow library last month in the WorldCat scraping lawsuit. That order also includes provisions that could be used to target intermediaries.


As highlighted earlier, however, not all domain registries and registrars fall under the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. Because of this, rightsholders and anti-piracy groups in other countries have added their own pressure.


In the Netherlands, anti-piracy group BREIN repeatedly urged the local domain registrar Openprovider to take down the .se and .pm domains in January. Openprovider informed BREIN that it had forwarded the request for closure to its customer.


BREIN doesn’t know for certain whether its pressure led directly to the .pm domain going offline, nor is it certain that Openprovider is the party that pulled the plug. However, the result is the same.


“In any case, the result counts. It’s good that the sites are offline. These shadow libraries are very harmful to authors,” BREIN director Bastiaan van Ramshorst informed TorrentFreak.


Regardless of who took action, the .pm domain is now out of rotation. That left Anna’s Archive down to a single working domain earlier this week, but that didn’t last very long.


Greenland Backup​


According to domain records, Anna’s Archive registered annas-archive.gl earlier this week. This new domain uses Njalla’s nameservers and is registered through Immaterialism Limited, a familiar setup from the site’s working .LI domain.

The choice of a Greenland-based domain is notable. With ongoing tensions between Greenland and the United States, the .gl registry may not be eager to subject itself to U.S. court jurisdiction. Whether that assumption holds remains to be seen.


Previously, The Pirate Bay also moved to a .GL domain briefly. However, the Greenlandic telecoms company that manages the registry decided to suspend it soon after, over alleged illegal use.


For now, Anna’s Archive continues its game of domain whack-a-mole, staying one step ahead of the takedowns for the moment. At the same time, it is expected that rightsholders will do everything in their power to maintain pressure.
 

Anna’s Archive Hit With $19.5m Default Judgment and Global Domain Takedown Order​


A coalition of thirteen major publishers has 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.

Earlier this month, a group of high-profile publishers, including Penguin Random House, Elsevier, and HarperCollins, asked a federal court in New York for a broad default judgment against Anna’s Archive.

The publishers argued that, in addition to sharing pirated books with the public, the shadow library is serving as a primary training data hub for AI companies like Meta and NVIDIA.

Because the site’s operators failed to show up in court to defend themselves, the publishers requested the court to rule in their favor.

Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff signed a default judgment granting the publishers exactly what they asked for. This includes a multi-million-dollar damages award and a far-reaching technical injunction to take out the site’s surviving domain names.

A $19.5 Million Paper Victory​

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 $322 million judgment won by the music industry against Anna’s Archive in the related Spotify case, it’s highly unlikely that this money will be recouped.

For now, the operators of Anna’s Archive remain strictly anonymous, which doesn’t help either. The default judgment 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.


Targeting Global Intermediaries​


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.

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:


– TELE Greenland/Tusass (managing the .gl domain)


– PKNIC (managing the .pk domain)


– National Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (managing Grenada’s .gd domain)


The names include some intermediaries that were already listed in the Spotify default judgment, as well as new ones.

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Unlike the Spotify scrape, which Anna’s Archive removed after the music industry’s lawsuit, the publishers’ books remain actively available on the site. That distinction may make this injunction harder for intermediaries to ignore.

The injunction will be most effective against American companies that are subject to the jurisdiction of the New York federal court. That includes Cloudflare and OwnRegistrar, among others.

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.

For now, however, the publishers have gotten everything they asked for from the court, which gives them a chance to take action against the shadow library’s current setup. If history is any indicator, Anna’s Archive will likely have a new batch of backup domains ready to deploy.

At the time of writing, Anna’s Archive’s three domain names remain active and online.

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A copy of the default judgment, signed by Judge Rakoff on May 19, 2026, is available here (pdf).
 

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Sigh. These faggots still haven't learned you can't kill a site that insists on staying alive. The fucking Pirate Bay has literally survived two of its founders.

Normally it's generally considered suicidal to just ignore lawsuits like this, but allowing default after default is actually pretty brilliant strategy here on Anna's Archive's part. Partially because it prevents them being unmasked (since presumably they'd have to reveal themselves to the court to be able to respond), but also because it avoids the Alex Jones Fuckup Gambit™ of ignoring everything until the last possible minute, then screeching at the Supreme Court where a precedent can be set.

So they're blue-balling the copyright cartel -- they're wasting millions on empty victories that yield nothing but also don't establish any meaningful precedent, and they're winning against anonymous target(s) from whom they'll never collect a fucking dime. Oh and also all their shit's still online for free. I sincerely hope the fuckers are losing money hand over fist (they're not, sadly, at least not because of "piracy").

There's another group who always seems to win by doing nothing and who also shares an innovative attitude towards piracy. Valve Software, I believe, whose owner Gabe Newell famously quipped "piracy is a customer service problem." Listen to the jolly fat man, you stupid cartel assholes. It'll go better for you if you'd just fucking listen.
 
I have no problem paying for media but you cannot tell me a paperback costs 25 Canadian dollars. I use Annas for a lot of japslop light novels that are either completely unavailable or like $40/book so a series would easily run into the hundreds.
 
Dante Alighieri said:
This isn't what a humiliation ritual is
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He's bringing up "goy" for no reason it's the mark of a retard.


On topic: I'm not shocked this happened, whether or not we agree Anna's archive. The fact is the archive TECHNICALLY broke copywrite/the law (quick aside the usa since the founding has been super spergy about copywriting, it's just gotten worse with these 101+ year bullshit but that's aside). I really hope Anna's archive can base themselves out of some country that will tell the usa to pound sand (like russia). These are the same publishers that have gone after libraries because they " didn't have the proper licenses". So they could all fucking burn and die full I care.

For kiwis smarter than me how will the affect my ability to USE Anna's archive?
 
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