Anna’s Archive has already faced its fair share of legal trouble and domain name problems this year.

The popular shadow library was sued by Spotify and several major record labels in late December and lost many of its domain names.

The site responded by adding new domain names. After losing its .LI domain last week, it added .VG,.PK, and .GD as new alternatives. However, this does not mean that the pressure is fading. Within a matter of days, the .VG domain was already suspended by the domain registrar.

63 Million Pirated Books

After watching the music industry’s legal push, a group of thirteen major publishers has also sprung into action. In a complaint filed at a New York federal court last week, they accuse Anna’s Archive of staggering copyright infringement by hosting 63 million books and 95 million papers, most of which are pirated.

“Defendants shamelessly describe themselves as a collection of ‘pirates’ not ‘bound by the law’,” the complaint reads.

The publishers highlight that the site facilitated 763,000 downloads per day last Tuesday, as reported by the site’s own statistics. These downloads are predominantly unauthorized, they add.

“Plaintiffs are not aware that any of the copyright-protected works on Anna’s Archive are licensed or authorized by the copyright owners; to the contrary, their reproduction and distributions are blatantly illegal infringements,” the complaint notes.

The publishers also highlight the AI training angle. They note that the shadow library provided high-speed access to 140+ million texts to LLM developers in China, Russia, and elsewhere. This includes a blog post titled “If You’re an LLM, Please Read This” which specifically targets AI companies.

The complaint alleged that Anna’s Archive reportedly charges significant fees for premium access, citing a LinkedIn post that mentioned a $200,000 donation.

“The amount of the ‘enterprise-level donation’ is not specified on the Website but it is reported to be $200,000. In an e-mail exchange with a researcher inquiring about the cost of the collection for AI training, Anna’s Archive offered premium access for $200,000,” the complaint notes.

The Injunction is Key

With 130 copyrighted works mentioned in the complaint, and damages up to $150,000 per infringed work, the publishers seek up to $19.5 million in compensation. However, with the site’s operators being unknown and unreachable, chances are slim that this amount will be paid.

The publishers are aware of this. In fact, if we carefully read the framing of their complaint, it appears that the legal action is predominantly intended to target domain names and other technical infrastructure of Anna’s Archive.

In recent weeks, the music industry injunction in the Atlantic/Spotify case has helped to take out several domain names. However, Anna’s Archive has since removed music-related content from the site. Therefore, the publishers now seek a similar injunction.

“Were the Defendants to repost the contents of its illegal repository of stolen works without these audio files, the Atlantic Order would still be satisfied. Nor can the publisher Plaintiffs in this case enforce the Atlantic Order to protect their own copyrights,” the complaint reads.

Injunction Targeting Hosts, Registrars, and Registries

The publishers want to play their part in taking Anna’s Archive offline, and they therefore request an injunction to protect their copyrights. This proposed injunction requires the site and its operator to halt all infringing activity and destroy all pirated books and articles.

More importantly, the injunction would also require third-party intermediaries to stop providing services to the shadow library. This applies to data centers, and hosting and service providers, domain registrars, and domain registries.

The proposed injunction would apply to all current domain names, as well as “any other websites that host the infringing content or directly facilitate its distribution.”

At the time of writing, the court has yet to sign off on the requested injunction. Whether that order will be enough to keep Anna’s Archive offline for good, given its track record of quickly securing new domains, has yet to be seen.

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A copy of the complaint, filed at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, is available here (pdf). The exhibit listing works in suit can be found here (pdf).

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

Last May, the Guardia di Finanza announced that 2,282 pirate IPTV subscribers had been fined across 80 Italian provinces.

The user details came from a criminal investigation in Lecce that dismantled a large IPTV operation, leaving behind a subscriber database that authorities put to immediate use.

Those fines, typically starting at €154 and rising to €5,000 for repeat offenders, were only the beginning. The same pirate IPTV (Pezzotto) users were in for more trouble.

Two Bills, Same Offense

In the autumn of 2025, DAZN sent letters to many of the pirate IPTV users who were already fined, offering to settle a civil damages claim for €500. This new payment request was in addition to the state fine, not instead of it.

Taking a page from this playbook, Serie A followed with its own damages demand. In January, the league’s CEO, Luigi De Siervo, announced that lawyers sent approximately 2,000 letters to individuals who were previously identified by the Guardia di Finanza, requesting €1,000 each as a settlement for the damages caused by their illegal streaming.

In late February, Serie A CEO Luigi De Siervo confirmed that the first payments have now been received. As with the DAZN case, these payments are also linked to Criminal Case no. 7719/2022 at the Tribunal of Lecce.

“Finally, even in our country, we are restoring the rule of law,” De Siervo said in a statement, adding that this is “only the beginning.”

“Those who use the pezzotto or illegally watch matches on apps, pirate IPTV, or via VPN, must know that they will be identified by the competent authorities, will have to pay fines of up to €5,000 as provided by law, and will above all be required to pay an additional €1,000 to Serie A as compensation for damages. Piracy is theft, period.”

Serie A does not mention how many payments it has received in response to the thousands of letters it sent out. This could be less than a handful, for now.

Follow The Money

It is clear that the messaging aims to deter future IPTV pirates, suggesting that even a VPN can’t secure them. While this statement is technically correct, it deserves some nuance.

The IPTV pirates who were identified in this case did not have their connections monitored in any way. Instead, the IPTV users were identified through their payment details, banking data, and other personal information obtained as part of a criminal investigation into an IPTV operator.

This is a notable distinction, as defense lawyers in the Lecce case have argued that some of the administrative fines issued lack technical evidence of actual piracy, resting solely on the payment trail.

One lawyer filed formal correction requests with Italian media, stressing that no IP addresses were identified, no devices were seized, and no specific copyrighted work was named in the citations. However, those challenges have not prevented the compensation letters from going out, or the payments from coming in.

Looming Threat

The Lecce case is one of several active proceedings. There are several other prosecutions, and, with permission from the Prosecutor’s Office, more details of pirate subscribers are reportedly shared with rightsholders.

Italy’s Minister for Sport, Andrea Abodi, went even further in October, suggesting that the names of those caught buying illegal subscriptions could eventually be published in a public naming and shaming campaign. “It’s beyond privacy concerns; it’s a crime,” he said at the time.

For now, however, the government appears content to let the financial pressure do the work. This also serves as a deterrent message, as those who received the €1,000 letter from Serie A but chose to ignore it potentially face a more expensive civil claim.

Meanwhile, the official Serie A website features a prominent advertisement for its long-running partner, 1XBET.

This is notable because the same gambling company the Motion Picture Association has flagged as a notorious piracy market, as it is frequently promoted through watermarked pirated movies and other advertisements on prominent pirate sites.

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