According to TorrentFreak, on May 19, Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a default judgment against the shadow library website Anna’s Archive. The court ordered it to pay $19.5 million in damages to 13 publishers, including Penguin Random House and Elsevier. A global domain ban was also imposed, requiring over 20 domain registrars, registries, and hosting providers to permanently deactivate all Anna’s Archive domains. Additionally, the site operators were instructed to reveal their identities and destroy all infringing content.
Previously, in April this year, the same site faced another default judgment totaling $322 million after being found guilty of scraping roughly 86 million music files; this was filed by Spotify and three major record labels. Combined, the penalties in both cases exceed $340 million. The Association of American Publishers (AAP) welcomed the latest ruling, noting that it explicitly classifies the use of Anna’s Archive for AI training data as copyright infringement. While concerns remain about the practical enforceability of these measures — given the site’s long history of anonymity and frequent domain switches — the publishing industry views the global domain ban as a significant deterrent.