American nonprofit OCLC is known globally for its leading database of bibliographic records, WorldCat. A few months ago, many of these records were posted publicly by the shadow library search engine, Anna’s Archive. OCLC believes that this is the result of a year-long hack and, with a lawsuit filed at an Ohio federal court, it demands damages.
WorldCat Sues Anna’s Archive
It is no secret that publishers fiercely oppose the search engine’s stated goals. The same also applies to OCLC, which has now elevated its concerns into a full-blown lawsuit, filed this month at a federal court in Ohio.
The complaint accuses Washington citizen Maria Dolores Anasztasia Matienzo and several “John Does” of operating the search engine and scraping WorldCat data. The scraping is equated to a cyberattack by OCLC and started around the time Anna’s Archive launched.
“Beginning in the fall of 2022, OCLC began experiencing cyberattacks on WorldCat.org and OCLC’s servers that significantly affected the speed and operations of WorldCat.org, other OCLC products and services, and OCLC’s servers and network infrastructure,” OCLC’s complaint notes.
“These attacks continued throughout the following year, forcing OCLC to devote significant time and resources toward non-routine network infrastructure enhancements, maintenance, and troubleshooting.”
The non-profit says that it spent roughly $68 million over the past two years developing and enhancing WorldCat records, which are an essential part of its operation. Having a copy of the data publicly available through Anna’s Archive is a direct threat to its business.
OCLC claims that Anna’s Archive unmasked itself as the “perpetrator of the attacks on WorldCat.org” when it publicly announced its scraping effort. This includes a detailed blog post the operators published on the matter, encouraging the public to use the scraped data.
In addition to harvesting data from WorldCat.org, the defendants are also accused of obtaining and using credentials of a member library to access WorldCat Discovery Services. This opened the door to yet more detailed records that are not available on WorldCat.org.
OCLC says that it spent significant time and resources to address the ‘attacks’ on its systems.
“These hacking attacks materially affected OCLC’s production systems and servers, requiring around-the-clock efforts from November 2022 to March 2023 to attempt to limit service outages and maintain the production systems’ performance for customers.
“To respond to these ongoing attacks, OCLC spent over 1.4 million dollars on its systems’ infrastructure and devoted nearly 10,000 employee hours to the same,” the complaint adds.
Regarding the operating location(s) of Anna’s Archive, OCLC is alleging the following (pages 7-9):
C. Defendants Rely on Sophisticated Technology and Online Practices to Conceal their Identities.
Defendants understand that their pirate library enterprise and related activities, here, hacking and harvesting OCLC’s WorldCat® records, are illegal. Defendants admit that they are engaging in and facilitating mass copyright infringement, stating, “[w]e deliberately violate the copyright law in most countries.” In another blog post, Defendants noted that their activities could lead to arrest and “decades of prison time.” Defendants have also recognized that their hacking and distribution of OCLC’s data is improper, acknowledging that WorldCat® is a “proprietary database,” that OCLC’s “business model requires protecting their database,” and that Defendants are “giving it all away. :-).”
Because Defendants understand their actions infringe on copyright laws, amongst others, Defendants go to great lengths to remain anonymous to ensure both that Anna’s Archive’s domains are not taken down and to avoid the legal consequences of their actions, including civil lawsuits where parties like OCLC seek to vindicate their rights, as well as criminal and regulatory enforcement actions undertaken by government entities. None of Anna’s Archive’s domains or its online blog provide a business address, business contact, or other contact information that would be found on a legitimate entity’s website.
Defendants have explained in a blog post that they are “being very careful not to leave any trace [of their online activities], and having strong operational security.” For instance, Anna’s Archive utilizes a VPN with “[a]ctual court-tested no-log policies with long track records of protecting privacy.” Each of the Anna’s Archive domains are registered using foreign hosts, registrars, and registrants in order to conceal the identity of the site operators. Additionally, Defendants rely on multiple proxy servers to maintain anonymity. Defendants also use a free version of Cloudflare, a top-level hosting provider, so that they do not have to provide any payment or other identifying information. Defendants selected Cloudflare because they claim Cloudflare has resisted requests to take down websites for copyright infringement. The individuals behind Anna’s Archive also use usernames as pseudonyms to mask their identities online.
Through the work of a cyber security and digital forensic investigation firm, OCLC was able to identify one of the individuals behind Anna’s Archive by name and locate a United States address, Defendant Maria Dolores Anasztasia Matienzo. However, the physical address and contact information of Anna’s Archive and the identities and contact information of the John Does remain unknown. It is highly likely that Anna’s Archive is a non-domestic, foreign entity, based on the findings from OCLC’s investigator, as set forth below.
OCLC explained the above in their Motion To Serve Defendant Anna’s Archive By Email, as justification for why they seek “permission to serve Anna’s Archive by alternative means, here, email, pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(h)(2) and (f)(3).”
