A federal court in Ohio has issued a default judgment and permanent injunction against Anna's Archive following a lawsuit filed by OCLC. OCLC, which owns the WorldCat database, had previously sued Anna's Archive for allegedly scraping and publishing its proprietary data more than two years prior. OCLC initially sought monetary damages but later dropped this claim, prioritizing a permanent injunction.
U.S. District Court Judge Michael Watson granted the injunction based on claims of 'trespass to chattels' and 'breach of contract'. The court determined that Anna's Archive, identified as a 'sophisticated party' that scraped the site daily, had constructive notice of the terms and entered into a 'browsewrap' agreement by using the service. Claims for 'unjust enrichment' and 'tortious interference' were denied.
The injunction prohibits Anna's Archive's operators and any parties acting in concert with them from:
- Scraping WorldCat data.
- Storing or distributing WorldCat data on Anna's Archive websites.
- Encouraging others to store, use, or share this data.
Additionally, the order mandates the deletion of all WorldCat data, including torrents.
OCLC intends to use this injunction to motivate third-party intermediaries, such as hosting companies, to remove WorldCat data from Anna's Archive's websites. It is also expected that the injunction may be sent to domain registrars and registries to apply further pressure.
These legal developments follow earlier, unrelated domain troubles for Anna's Archive, including the suspension of its .org domain by the U.S.-based Public Interest Registry and its .se domain becoming unresponsive due to registrar action. The specific reasons for these earlier domain issues were not detailed by the respective registrars or registries and occurred before the federal court's injunction.