Anna’s Archive loses .org domain, says suspension likely unrelated to Spotify piracy

Summary

Legal problems As TorrentFreak writes, “It is rare to see a .org domain involved in domain name suspensions. The American non-profit Public Interest Registry (PIR), which oversees the .org domains, previously refused to suspend domain names voluntarily, including thepiratebay.org. The registry’s cautionary stance suggests that the actions against annas-archive.org are backed by a court order.” A spokesperson for the Public Interest Registry told Ars that “PIR is unable to comment on the situation at this time.” We contacted Tucows and will update this article if it provides any comment. After last month’s Spotify incident, Spotify told Ars that it “identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping” and “implemented new safeguards for these types of anti-copyright attacks.” We asked Spotify today if it has taken any additional steps against Anna’s Archive and will update this article if it provides a response. Anna’s Archive is also facing a lawsuit from OCLC, a nonprofit that operates the WorldCat library catalog on behalf of member libraries. The lawsuit alleges that Anna’s Archive “illegally hacked WorldCat.org” to steal 2.2TB of data. An OCLC motion for default judgment filed in November asked for a permanent injunction prohibiting Anna’s Archive from scraping or distributing WorldCat data and requiring Anna’s Archive to delete all its copies of WorldCat data. OCLC said it hopes such a judgment would compel web hosting services to take action. “OCLC hopes to take the judgment to website hosting services so that OCLC’s WorldCat data will be removed from Anna’s Archive’s websites,” said the November 17 motion filed in US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. The court has not yet ruled on the motion.