Online piracy is a constant headache for copyright holders; one that’s particularly difficult to shake.
Academic publishers are also grappling with this issue and have recently ramped up their enforcement actions.
One key strategy is to issue takedown notices to intermediaries, including the billions of requests sent to Google. Publishers have also obtained site blocking orders in several countries and, when possible, they go after the infringing sites directly.
Publishers Seek to Unmask Shadow Libraries
In a new filing at a D.C. federal court, a coalition of academic publishers is seeking to unmask pirate site operators for potential legal action. The group includes the American Chemical Society, Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Taylor & Francis Group.
The companies requested a DMCA subpoena and that was swiftly issued by a court clerk. The subpoena is directed at internet infrastructure company Cloudflare, compelling it to hand over all identifying information the company has related to various shadow library domains, as well as other sites.
The targeted domains, all presumably Cloudflare users, include those related to the major shadow libraries, such as 1lib.sk, annas-archive.org, annas-archive.se, libgen.gl, libgen.la, libgenesis.co, z-lib.fm, z-lib.fo, z-lib.gd, z-lib.gl and sci-hub.vkif.top.
The paperwork clarifies that the subpoena is sought to “obtain the identity of alleged infringers” and that the information obtained will be used to protect the publishers’ “rights under the U.S. Copyright Act”.
As is typical with DMCA subpoenas, Cloudflare is asked to produce all relevant information it has on file. This includes names, physical addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, and any billing or account records.
More Targets, Including Uptime Monitor SLUM
The subpoena also lists other domains including collegepdf.com, dl4all.org, ebookmass.com, letmeread.net, and limetorrents.lol, which all allegedly linked to pirated books.
While many of these domains indeed appear to link to specific infringing works, the same can’t be said for the open-slum.org domain. This site is better known as SLUM, the Shadow Library Uptime Monitor.
As the name suggests, SLUM provides a status overview of various Shadow Library domains and relevant hyperlinks. However, as far as we can see, it doesn’t link to any specific infringing content.
In fact, the site itself states that its goal is to provide neutral technical status monitoring and historical analysis. It does not host, mirror, or distribute any copyrighted material.
The publishers, however, appear to see it as an infringing service. In their subpoena evidence, they mention that it “redirects to https://annas-archive.org”, a term that suggests automatic forwarding. However, at the time of writing, the site merely contains a standard hyperlink to the website, which is a crucial distinction.
Publishers ask Cloudflare to Disable Access
DMCA subpoenas are not reviewed by a judge but signed off by a court clerk, in this case a day after the request was filed. The subpoena orders Cloudflare to provide the requested information by August 21.
Cloudflare can also object to the disclosure, but that’s not typically what it does. Nor is it likely to comply with additional requests the publishers made when they first alerted the company about these domains.
Before requesting the DMCA subpoena, the publishers notified Cloudflare through a takedown notice, asking the company to disable access to the domains.
“We hereby give notice of these activities and demand that you take expeditious action to disable access to the material described above, thereby preventing the illegal reproduction and distribution of this content via your company’s services,” they wrote.
Cloudflare doesn’t host the sites in question but is known to provide services to some, though its CDN for example. Since these domains are still online using Cloudflare, that request was not immediately honored.
The subpoena is a separate process, and Cloudflare is known to respond to these. Whether the information the publishers will receive will help to identify the site owners is another question. After all, pirate site operators tend to take steps to hide their identities.
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A copy of the DMCA subpoena signed by a clerk at the federal court in D.C is available here (pdf 1, 2, 3)
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
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