For fans of manga and manhwa comics, Bato.to has been an icon for many years.

The pirate site has reportedly changed owners over the years, but through the main site and dozens of mirrors, it kept its many millions of monthly visitors on board.

Since last November, the site has not been running smoothly, however. Several moderators reported that the site’s operator, Larry, had become unreachable, which resulted in various technical problems.

Batoto Communities Shut Down

Earlier this week, the trouble appeared to worsen when the official Batoto Discord server, run by the moderation team, announced that it would shut down as well, citing legal challenges and ongoing issues with the site. This effectively confirmed that the site’s moderators were throwing in the towel.

Not much later, the official Batoto subreddit followed the same route. While it would not shut down completely, the moderators officially cut its ties with anything piracy or Batoto-related.

“Due to recent legal developments, it is clear that all activity, discussion, or support related to the former website and its services has permanently ended,” the subreddit mods wrote.

“Out of respect for creators, rights holders, and applicable laws, this subreddit will no longer be affiliated with, connected to, or associated with the website in any way.”

The seemingly obligatory mention of supporting legal services suggests that this soft shutdown was also the result of legal action. In fact, it appears that Batoto-related people and communication channels are targeted across the board.

This includes newly launched Discord channels. Only those who abide by a strict set of rules to ban any type of infringement appear to survive. This includes the newly launched Yoru reading community, which specifically prohibits illegal content, pointing people to official Webtoon and Tapas releases instead.

Kakao Entertainment Takes Credit

While it is clear that legal pressure is being applied, the source remained unmentioned. Today we can officially confirm that Kakao Entertainment is driving the action.

Through its dedicated anti-piracy enforcement arm, P.CoK, the South Korean entertainment giant is categorically targeting Bato.to and many related people and services.

The most significant blow to the operation is the identification of Bato.to’s founder and core developer. P.CoK confirmed to TorrentFreak that they have tracked the individual to their country of residence, where legal proceedings are now active.

Responding to this threat, the P.CoK team tackled the problem from multiple sides. In addition to preparing a lawsuit against the operator, it went after other key channels, including the aforementioned communities on Reddit and Discord.

“We adopted a strategy that categorizes individuals involved in the operation into multiple tiers and applies tailored countermeasures to each group. Legal proceedings are currently underway in the country of residence of the founder and core developer,” P.CoK notes.

Cease and Desist

The people in lower tiers, including admins and moderators, were also identified. These all received personalized cease-and-desist letters, urging them to shut down their operation, or else.

“We have identified the majority of individuals who are directly or indirectly involved in the operation—such as sub-developers, moderators, and community administrators—and have sequentially issued Cease and Desist (C&D) letters to them,” P.CoK told us.

These cease-and-desist notices came with the relevant legal justification and a specific set of actions these people were expected to take. That likely means showing respect for rightsholders, as we have seen in a few of the public responses.

New Targets?

A final update by the subreddit team confirms the pressure from Kakao Entertainment. Clearly worried that ‘Reddit mods could be next,’ the subreddit was set to restricted.

The subreddit also clearly distances itself from a new Batoto-‘inspired’ site that surfaced online this week.

P.CoK, which has a history of unconventional but effective anti-piracy actions , will undoubtedly keep an eye on any new sites that emerge. At the same time, it is also going after MangaPark and AniXL, which have repeatedly been linked to Batoto. In fact, the anti-piracy group notes that new legal proceedings are already being prepared.

“We are aware that some of these individuals are also involved in the operation of MangaPark and AniXL, and we are preparing strong legal actions against Mangapark as well as newly established Bato-affiliated sites,” P.CoK concludes, suggesting that their work is not done yet.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The Oscars remain the most anticipated movie awards show of the year, followed closely by hundreds of millions of film enthusiasts around the globe.

In March, the 98th Academy Awards ceremony will return to the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, where millions of fans will watch the crowning of this year’s “Best Picture”.
.
There are currently ten contenders in the race for the prestigious award. The nominees range from Hollywood heavyweights such as F1 and One Battle After Another , to international critical darlings such as Norway’s Sentimental Value and Brazil’s The Secret Agent .

Sinners’ Oscar Nominations Record

While these are all serious contenders, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners clearly stands out. The movie received a record-breaking number of sixteen nominations last week, including one for the best picture category.

The record elevated the press attention for the film, which directly impacted legal demand. After the nominations, Sinners immediately shot back into the Top 10 on Max, while VOD sales on Prime Video and Apple TV also got a boost.

There is also a darker side to this increased exposure in the form of online piracy. Pirates are simply a subset of movie fans, and when legal demand increases, interest in pirate sites follows in the same direction.

We have reported on this phenomenon in the past, but this year offers one of the most clear examples.

Sinners’ Piracy Triples

By looking at the BitTorrent download estimates collected through a large sample of data, we can see the interest in Sinners tripling after the nominations were announced last Thursday.

These data, collected with help from Iknow , also show a healthy 50% boost in downloads for Bugonia , another best picture nominee. However, that pales in comparison to the Sinners surge.

Meanwhile, the 2025 Superman release, which acts as a control group because it wasn’t nominated, saw no download boost at all. This confirms that the other observed increases are triggered by the Oscars nominations.

These findings once again show how the Oscar nominations can have a clear and direct effect on piracy numbers. And if Sinners can convert its record number of nominations into a record number of wins, we can expect an even bigger surge.

In closing, it is worth stressing that the download estimates reported here are based on a large sample of BitTorrent activity. This represents merely a fraction of the overall piracy interest, which also includes pirate streaming portals that are good for many millions of unauthorized views.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

In recent years, Aylo has taken an aggressive stance against pirate sites, doing everything possible to shut these down.

The parent company of Pornhub, which owns popular brands such as “Reality Kings”, “Brazzers”, “MOFOS”, has already won several lawsuits against high profile targets such as Daftsex and Goodporn .

Early last year, Aylo filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington against a collection of pirate adult websites, including ‘Freshporno,’ ‘Kojka’, ‘PornHeal’. These eight sites were allegedly operated by someone named Anton Popravkin.

To stop the infringing activity, Aylo’s copyright enforcement arm sent more than 10,000 DMCA takedown notices to the piracy ring. However. These notices failed to get the infringing videos removed, so Aylo decided to take the matter to court.

Aylo Requests Multi-Million Dollar Default

Aylo accused the piracy network, which reportedly received more than three million monthly visits, of publicly displaying many thousands of works without permission. This was done with a profit motive, making the operator liable for willful copyright infringement.

“Popravkin Anton willfully infringed Plaintiff’s Works at least 9,006 times: Plaintiff identified 9,006 of its copyrighted registered works being displayed across 27,105 infringing URLs on the Websites,” the complaint read.

“The sheer volume of infringements demonstrates Popravkin Anton’s deliberate and willful disregard for copyright law, as well as his ongoing operation of a business that operates by monetizing copyright infringement.”

The operator of the site never responded to the lawsuit, which left Aylo no other option than to request a default judgment. While Aylo could theoretically request $150,000 per work, for a total of more than a billion dollars in damages, it settled for a tenth of that.

In its motion for a default judgment, Aylo requested $15,000 in statutory damages per work infringed. With 9,006 works, this brings the total to $135,090,000 in statutory damages.

Court Awards $90,060,000 in Damages

Last Friday, U.S. District Judge Kymberly K. Evanson granted Aylo’s motion for default judgment. However, instead of awarding $15,000 per work, she reduced it to $10,000 per infringed work. In addition, Aylo was granted attorney’s fees and costs of $20,350.

In the order, Judge Evanson notes that Aylo hasn’t shared any persuasive evidence to justify its $15,000 claim. In addition, the court deems $10,000 per work sufficient to send a deterrent message to other prospective pirates.

“Because Plaintiff has not presented persuasive evidence to support its $15,000 valuation of each infringed work, the Court declines to assume that the full amount requested is appropriate,” the order reads.

“The amount awarded will nonetheless discourage wrongful conduct and uphold the integrity of copyright laws,” Judge Evanson adds.

Domain Name Seizures

While a $90 million damages award sounds good, it is unlikely that Aylo will recoup this, as the main defendant was not located. And since Anton Popravkin likely doesn’t reside in the United States, they will likely ignore the court order.

Therefore, the real value of the default judgment lies in the domain name transfers that were granted in response to the “willful” and “malicious” copyright ingringement.

The court issued a broad permanent injunction ordering the U.S.-based domain name registry Verisign to change the registrar for the eight targeted domains to EuroDNS. EuroDNS is subsequently instructed to change the registrant for those domain names directly to Aylo Premium Ltd.

“Verisign, Inc. shall change the registrar for the domain names 3prn.com, freshporno.net, frprn.com, homexvideo.com, kojka.com,mojva.com, onlineporno.cc, and pornheal.com to EuroDNS, and instruct EuroDNS to change the registrant for those domain names to Aylo Premium Ltd,” the order reads.

At the time of writing, all domains remain linked to the piracy ring, but it is expected that these will become unavailable later this week, when Aylo takes them over. Whether that will permanently keep the pirate sites offline remains to be seen.

—

A copy of the order granting the default judgment, issued by U.S. District Judge Kymberly K. Evanson, is available here (pdf) . The order signed by the court clerk can be found here (pdf) .

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The Diary of Anne Frank , written by a young girl hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam during World War II, is one of the best-known literary works in history.

While the diary’s importance is widely agreed upon, the accessibility of its digital likeness remains at the center of a modern-day copyright battle.

These copyrights are controlled by the Swiss-based Anne Frank Fonds, which was the sole heir of Anne’s father, Otto Frank. The Fonds states that many print versions of the diary remain protected for decades , and even the manuscripts are not freely available everywhere.

In the Netherlands, for example, certain sections of the manuscripts remain protected by copyright until 2037, even though they have entered the public domain in neighboring countries like Belgium.

Anne Frank ©

To navigate these conflicting laws, the Dutch Anne Frank Stichting published a scholarly edition online using “state-of-the-art” geo-blocking to prevent Dutch residents from accessing the site. Visitors from the Netherlands and other countries where the work is protected are met with a clear message, informing them about these access restrictions.

“The scholarly edition of the Anne Frank manuscripts cannot be made available in all countries, due to copyright considerations,” is the message disallowed visitors get to see.

Despite these blocking measures, the Swiss-based Anne Frank Fonds was not pleased. The Fonds essentially argued that if a block isn’t 100% bypass-proof, the content shouldn’t be online at all.

The Dutch lower court dismissed this argument, stating the defendants had taken reasonable measures to prevent access from the Netherlands. The Fonds appealed, without result, and the case is now before the Dutch Supreme Court, which referred several questions to the EU’s top court (CJEU) to decide the fate of VPN neutrality and the sufficiency of geo-blocking.

Court Adviser Backs VPN Neutrality

In an opinion published this month, Advocate General Rantos of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) sides with common sense, concluding that geo-blocking is a sufficient measure to protect against unauthorized access.

The opinion concludes that digital copyright protections can always be broken or bypassed. That by itself should not automatically mean that the publisher is liable, especially if ‘state-of-the-art’ geo-blocking measures are in place, as the Anne Frank Stichting argued.

“Liability would only arise if the technical measures were found to be deliberately ineffective so that they could be easily circumvented,” the opinion reads.

Equally important, Rantos concludes that a VPN provider isn’t liable for the unlawful actions of users who use their service to bypass geographical restrictions.

“The mere fact that those or similar services may be used for [unlawful] purposes is not sufficient to establish that the service providers themselves communicate the protected work to the public,” the Advocate General writes.

“It would be different if those service providers actively encouraged the unlawful use of their services. In that case, the service providers could be regarded as playing an essential role in making the works in question available.”

In other words, the opinion concludes that VPNs are neutral services and that they can only be held liable if they actively encourage copyright infringement or other wrongdoing.

What’s Next?

The opinion is not binding for the CJEU, which is expected to issue its final ruling later this year. This final ruling will be key for the digital future of the Anne Frank Diary, as well as all other geo-blocked content on the Internet.

If the court agrees with the opinion of Advocate General Rantos, the status quo will remain. However, if geo-blocking were somehow not to be sufficient, this would impact hundreds of popular sites and services, including all popular video streaming platforms.

Even worse, if VPNs were to be held liable for the actions of users without the providers’ awareness, that would create some significant backlash.

—

A copy of the opinion of Advocate General Athanasios Rantos, delivered on 15 January, is available here (pdf) .

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Originally the home of The Pirate Bay, Sweden has a long and well-documented history when it comes to online piracy.

As in other countries, however, many Swedish pirates have made the switch from relatively cumbersome torrents to on-demand streaming. That includes pirate IPTV services.

According to recent estimates, some 700,000 Swedish households have access to illegal IPTV services. These low-cost subscriptions are substantially cheaper than those offered by legitimate streaming services, but they nonetheless bring in serious revenue for the operators.

To curb the IPTV problem, Sweden has convicted operators and issued blocking orders . In addition, the Government plans to update local law to make it possible to issue fines to IPTV subscribers, effectively outlawing the purchase of these subscriptions.

New IPTV Crackdown

These potential fines are relevant again after Swedish authorities recently toppled the high-profile IPTV operation Nordicplay. As reported by Expressen , the prosecution has charged a 43-year-old man and a 55-year-old associate with gross accounting fraud.

The younger man is the main suspect, and he reportedly earned an estimated 35 million Swedish Kronor (approx. $3.8 million USD) in revenue. These IPTV payments came in through several companies, which acted as a front to disguise the operation.

Many of these payments came in through the Swedish mobile payment system Swish , as shown below. Swish is tied directly to a personal identity number, which likely explains why the subscribers could be accurately identified.

The men, who both deny any wrongdoing, are not being prosecuted for copyright-related crimes, but for fraud. According to the prosecution, they failed to report the proceeds for tax purposes.

The 43-year-old, who was previously convicted of fraud, was a relatively large reseller of Nordic One, which reportedly serves half of the Swedish IPTV market. And indeed, with many thousands of subscribers, the size of the operation was substantial.

4,886 Subscribers

When investigators searched the computer and phone of the main suspect, they found a list of more than 20,000 contact details. After follow-up investigations, 4,886 of these could be linked to payments.

These subscribers are not being prosecuted, but Sara Lindbäck of the local anti-piracy outfit Rights Alliance , suggests that the police could reach out to these subscribers to send a warning.

“If the police would inform them that ‘Hi, your customer information is found in a criminal investigation,’ I think people might become a little more aware,” Lindbäck told Expressen.

This type of outreach would not be unprecedented. Previously, similar warnings went out to IPTV customers in the UK.

In the near future, however, Sweden could have an even stronger deterrent. As announced last September by Minister of Culture, Parisa Liljestrand, new legislation aims to make it possible to fine IPTV subscribers.

This updated legislation explicitly outlaws the consumption/viewing of pirate IPTV services, which is largely seen as a legal grey area now. If approved, this proposal will go into effect on July 1, 2026.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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 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.

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 lawsuit may have reached its goal already. A few days ago, the Spotify download section was removed by Anna’s Archive.

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.

—

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

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Chip giant NVIDIA has been one of the main financial beneficiaries in the artificial intelligence boom.

Revenue surged due to high demand for its AI-learning chips and data center services, and the end doesn’t appear to be in sight.

Besides selling the most sought-after hardware, NVIDIA is also developing its own models, including NeMo, Retro-48B, InstructRetro, and Megatron. These are trained using their own hardware and with help from large text libraries, much like other tech giants do.

Authors Sue NVIDIA for Copyright Infringement

Like other tech companies, NVIDIA has also seen significant legal pushback from copyright holders in response to its training methods. This includes authors, who, in various lawsuits, accused tech companies of training their models on pirated books.

In early 2024, for example, several authors sued NVIDIA over alleged copyright infringement.

Through the class action lawsuit, they claimed that the company’s AI models were trained on the Books3 dataset that included copyrighted works taken from the ‘pirate’ site Bibliotik. Since this happened without permission, the authors demanded compensation.

In response, NVIDIA defended its actions as fair use, noting that books are nothing more than statistical correlations to its AI models. However, the allegations didn’t go away. On the contrary, the plaintiffs found more evidence during discovery.

‘NVIDIA Contacted Anna’s Archive’

Last Friday, the authors filed an amended complaint that significantly expands the scope of the lawsuit. In addition to adding more books, authors, and AI models, it also includes broader “shadow library” claims and allegations.

The authors, including Abdi Nazemian , now cite various internal Nvidia emails and documents, suggesting that the company willingly downloaded millions of copyrighted books.

The new complaint alleges that “competitive pressures drove NVIDIA to piracy”, which allegedly included collaborating with the controversial Anna’s Archive library.

According to the amended complaint, a member of Nvidia’s data strategy team reached out to Anna’s Archive to find out what the pirate library could offer the trillion-dollar company

“Desperate for books, NVIDIA contacted Anna’s Archive—the largest and most brazen of the remaining shadow libraries—about acquiring its millions of pirated materials and ‘including Anna’s Archive in pre-training data for our LLMs’,” the complaint notes.

“Because Anna’s Archive charged tens of thousands of dollars for ‘high-speed access’ to its pirated collections […] NVIDIA sought to find out what “high-speed access” to the data would look like.”

Anna’s Archive Points Out Legal ‘Concern’

According to the complaint, Anna’s Archive then warned Nvidia that its library was illegally acquired and maintained. Because the site previously wasted time on other AI companies, the pirate library asked NVIDIA executives if they had internal permission to move forward.

This permission was allegedly granted within a week, after which Anna’s Archive provided the chip giant with access to its pirated books.

“Within a week of contacting Anna’s Archive, and days after being warned by Anna’s Archive of the illegal nature of their collections, NVIDIA management gave ‘the green light’ to proceed with the piracy. Anna’s Archive offered NVIDIA millions of pirated copyrighted books.”

The complaint states that Anna’s Archive promised to provide NVIDIA with access to roughly 500 terabytes of data. This included millions of books that are usually only accessible through Internet Archive’s digital lending system, which itself has been targeted in court .

The complaint does not explicitly mention whether NVIDIA ended up paying Anna’s Archive for access to the data.

Additionally, it’s worth mentioning that NVIDIA also stands accused of using other pirated sources. In addition to the previously included Books3 database, the new complaint also alleges that the company downloaded books from LibGen, Sci-Hub, and Z-Library.

Direct and Vicarious Copyright Infringement

In addition to downloading and using pirated books for its own AI training, the authors allege NVIDIA distributed scripts and tools that allowed its corporate customers to automatically download “ The Pile “, which contains the Books3 pirated dataset.

These allegations lead to new claims of vicarious and contributory infringement, alleging that NVIDIA generated revenue from customers by facilitating access to these pirated datasets.

Based on these and other claims, the authors request to be compensated for the damages they suffered. This applies to the named authors, but also to potentially hundreds of others who may later join the class action lawsuit.

As far as we know, this is the first time that correspondence between a major U.S. tech company and Anna’s Archive was revealed in public. This will only raise the profile of the pirate library, which just lost several domain names , even further.

—

A copy of the first consolidated and amended complaint, filed at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, is available here (pdf) . The named authors include Abdi Nazemian, Brian Keene, Stewart O’Nan, Andre Dubus III, and Susan Orlean.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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.

—

Update January 19: Anna’s Archive’s .IN domain appears to be unreachable.

—

A copy of the opinion and order issued by U.S. District Court Judge Michael Watson is available here (pdf) .

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

It is rare for a “legal threat” made in a news article to actually materialize into a class-action lawsuit years later, but that is precisely what has happened with Brandon Clement and his fellow storm chasers.

Back in 2022, we reported on the “never-ending stream of infringements” these independent videographers were facing on Facebook and Instagram.

At the time, Clement was deeply frustrated with a system where billions of views were being siphoned off by “copyright hijackers”. He warned them that legal action might be needed to force a breakthrough, asking copyright lawyers to reach out.

Fast-forward to January 2026, and that early warning has escalated into a class-action complaint filed in a Texas federal court. The lawsuit accuses Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, Meta Platforms, of various types of copyright infringement.

Meta Fails to Take Down Infringing Videos

Filed by a group of extreme weather videographers, whose content often spreads virally, the complaint alleges that Meta often fails to enforce its own terms, which prohibit copyright infringement.

In this case, the plaintiffs are not referring to an occasional takedown notice that was ignored. The plaintiffs claim to have sent ‘hundreds of thousands’ of notices over the years, and the lawsuit identifies hundreds of specific DMCA requests that Meta allegedly ignored or improperly handled.

“Despite submitting compliant DMCA take-down requests, Meta, for various improper reasons, failed to take-down the unauthorized uses of Plaintiffs’ various works by the Infringing Users,” the complaint reads.

Allegedly, the content that was not removed by Meta could often be linked to popular accounts that presumably earned the social media giant significant revenues.

“Meta, without providing any reasoning, has numerous times incorrectly determined that a conflicting party with millions of followers has ‘won’ a video ownership conflict as to certain videos, which then precludes Plaintiffs from using Rights Manager to locate infringing uses for their copyrighted videos,” the complaint notes.

According to the complaint, Meta temporarily blocked one of the videographers from using its “Rights Manager” takedown tool because they were “misusing this feature by going too fast.

In addition, Meta also allegedly acted as the ‘judge and jury’ by making fair use determinations, often without providing any legal reasoning or an opportunity for the creators to appeal.

One of the videos referenced in the evidence list was shot and copyrighted by Max Olson, covering a 2022 storm surge. A watermarked clip featuring more than two minutes of this footage was posted on Facebook by Ariana News. It remains online today , after Facebook effectively brushed aside the infringement claim by citing fair use.

Information shared with TorrentFreak shows Facebook’s full response below. Despite the length of the clip and the original creator’s watermark, the company claims it is not clear whether the video infringes any copyrights.

Leaked Documents as a Smoking Gun

The complaint lists more than 200 specific instances where Meta allegedly failed to act. In doing so, it also mentions various popular accounts by name, some of which the videographers see as persistent infringers with millions of followers.

To further bolster the allegation that Meta willingly ignores abuse, the complaint cites leaked documents that were reported by Reuters last November. These documents showed that fraudulent advertising was a multi-billion-dollar revenue stream for Meta.

While this is not directly linked to copyright infringement, it reportedly revealed that scams of small advertisers would be shut down after eight warnings, while so-called ‘High Value Accounts’ could accrue more than 500 strikes before Meta would take action.

This allegedly shows that Meta can sometimes prioritize its own profits over protecting the legitimate interests of others. The plaintiffs believe that this also applies to their case.

Infringements and Damages Claims

The plaintiffs accuse Meta of failing to properly respond to DMCA takedown notices, which means that it no longer should be able to claim Safe Harbor protection. In addition, the company’s alleged arbitrary fair use determinations make it liable for direct copyright infringement too.

“Meta has failed to comply with the take-down requirements under the DMCA and its own intellectual property policies regarding repeat infringers, indicating gross negligence in its legal compliance which is essential for a company with Meta’s reach, capabilities, and level of sophistication.”

“Meta’s failure to effectively enforce its own copyright policies indicates de facto willful infringement,” the complaint adds.

The lawsuit includes various claims, including direct copyright infringement, contributory infringement, vicarious infringement, and inducement. The videographers don’t ask for a specific damages amount, but with potential damages of $150,000 per work, this can easily run into the millions of dollars.

Meta has yet to respond formally to the complaint, but it is expected to contest these allegations to the best of its abilities.

—

A copy of the class action complaint, filed this week at the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, is available here (pdf) .

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.