Publishers Move To Shut Down 'shadow' Library Allegedly Fuelling Ai Chatbots

By Author: The Law Reporters
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A group of major publishers, including the “Big Five” English-language houses — Hachette, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster — filed a lawsuit in New York federal court on Friday seeking to close down the prominent “shadow library” Anna’s Archive.

The suit alleges that Anna’s Archive has pirated more than 63 million books and supplied them to companies for artificial intelligence training.

“Anna’s Archive is a brazen pirate operation that steals and distributes millions of literary works while outrageously offering access to AI developers in exchange for cryptocurrency payments,” said Maria Pallante, president of the publishers’ trade group, the Association of American Publishers.

In a related case, Spotify and a group of major music publishers filed a lawsuit against Anna’s Archive in January, seeking trillions in damages for pirating tens of millions of audio files. The site, run by unidentified individuals, has not responded to that case.

The publishers’ lawsuit asserts that Anna’s Archive has ...
... continued its piracy in defiance of an earlier court order in the audio piracy case. Federal courts can order US internet service providers to block pirate sites. The publishers have asked the Manhattan court to shut down Anna’s Archive and seek damages of up to $150,000 per pirated work.

While fully disabling websites based overseas is difficult, Pallante told Reuters she is hopeful the lawsuit will at least disrupt the site’s operations. “It comes down to doing nothing or doing what we can,” she said.

Friday’s lawsuit also names academic publishers Cengage, Elsevier, McGraw Hill and John Wiley & Sons as plaintiffs. It states that the self-proclaimed “world’s largest shadow library,” launched in 2022, allows users to download pirated material.

Publishers say Anna’s Archive has provided “high-speed access” to stolen works to customers in China, Russia and other countries for training AI large language models used in chatbots and other systems.

Several groups of copyright owners, including authors, artists and music companies, have filed similar lawsuits against tech firms for allegedly misusing their works to train AI systems. The defendants in these cases have denied wrongdoing.

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