Judge Orders Anna's Archive To Delete Scraped Data

Anna's Archive has been hit with a U.S. federal court default judgment and permanent injunction over its scraping and distribution of OCLC's WorldCat data, which occurred more than two years ago. According to the ruling, the shadow library must delete all copies of its WorldCat data and stop scraping, using, storing, or distributing the data. "It is expected that OCLC will use the injunction to motivate third-party intermediaries to take action against Anna's Archive," reports TorrentFreak. From the report: 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. 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. Further reading: Spotify Says 'Anti-Copyright Extremists' Scraped Its Library

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