Judge orders Anna’s Archive to delete scraped data; no one thinks it will comply

According to Ars Technica, a federal judge has entered a default judgment against Anna’s Archive, ordering the shadow library to delete all copies of WorldCat data and to stop scraping, using, storing or distributing the data. The operator, which launched in 2022, archives books and other written materials and makes them available via torrents, and has recently expanded by scraping Spotify to create a 300TB copy of the most-streamed songs.

The case was brought by OCLC, a nonprofit that operates the WorldCat library catalogue on behalf of member libraries, which alleged that Anna’s Archive “illegally hacked WorldCat[.]org” to steal 2.2TB of data. Anna’s Archive previously lost its .org domain a couple of weeks ago but remains online at other domains. The judge’s ruling was described as a default judgment against the site, with the clear expectation that Anna’s Archive will not comply, according to the report.