Two Russian Nationals Charged with Running Massive E-Book Piracy Website; Department of Justice U.S. Attorney’s Office Eastern District of New York, November 16, 2022

Department of Justice

U.S. Attorney’s Office

Eastern District of New York

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

"Two Russian Nationals Charged with Running Massive E-Book Piracy Website

Defendants Operated Z-Library, Which Offered Free Download of Copyrighted Works

Earlier today, in federal court in Brooklyn, an indictment and a complaint were unsealed charging Russian nationals Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova with criminal copyright infringement, wire fraud and money laundering for operating Z-Library, an online e-book piracy website.  The pair was arrested on November 3, 2022 in Cordoba, Argentina at the request of the United States.  At the same time, Z-Library’s network of online domains was also taken offline and seized by the U.S. government, pursuant to a court order that was also unsealed today.

Breon Peace, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and Michael J. Driscoll, Assistant Director-in-Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office (FBI), announced the arrests and charges.

“As alleged, the defendants profited illegally off work they stole, often uploading works within mere hours of publication, and in the process victimized authors, publishers and booksellers,” stated United States Attorney Peace. “This Office is committed to protecting the intellectual property rights that enable creative and artistic expression, and holding individuals accountable for threatening those rights.”

“The defendants are alleged to have operated a website for over a decade whose central purpose was providing stolen intellectual property, in violation of copyright laws.  Intellectual property theft crimes deprive their victims of both ingenuity and hard-earned revenue. The FBI is determined to ensure those willing to steal and profit from the creativity of others are stopped and made to face the consequences in the criminal justice system,” stated FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Driscoll.

As alleged in the indictment and court filings, Z-Library bills itself as “the world’s largest library” and claims to offer more than 11 million e-books for download.  Z-Library, which has been active since approximately 2009, offers e-book files in a variety of file formats, stripped of their copyright protections, and encourages users to upload and download titles.  Many of the e-books offered by Z-Library are protected intellectual property for which authors hold copyrights and publishers hold exclusive distribution rights, and which Z-Library has no right or license to distribute, and which are available elsewhere only with anti-circumvention measures applied. As such, a central purpose of Z-Library is to allow users to download copyrighted books for free in violation of U.S. law.   In addition to its homepage, Z-Library operates as a complex network of approximately 249 interrelated web domains.  As part of this action, those domains were taken offline and seized by the U.S. government.

The charges in the indictment are allegations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.  

The government’s case was initiated by the Office’s Cyber Crime Task Force.  Assistant United States Attorney Chand Edwards-Balfour, Alexander Mindlin, Antoinette N. Rangel and Kaitlin Farrell are prosecuting the case.  Brian Morris of the Office’s Asset Recovery Section is handling forfeiture matters.

The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs and Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, the FBI’s Legal Attachés abroad and foreign authorities in multiple countries provided critical assistance in this case.  In particular, the Office extends its appreciation to the Argentine authorities for their assistance in the capture of Napolsky and Ermakova.

Multiple organizations representing the victim authors and publishers also provided critical assistance in this case.  The Office extends its particular appreciation to The Authors Guild in New York and The Publishers Association in London for their assistance.  The Office also extends its appreciation to the National Cyber-Forensics & Training Alliance for its assistance in the domain takedown.     

The Defendants:

ANTON NAPOLSKY
Age:  33
St. Petersburg, Russia

VALERIIA ERMAKOVA
Age:  27
St. Petersburg, Russia

E.D.N.Y. Docket No. 22-CR-525 (NM)

Attachment(s): 

Download Indictment"

Justice Department investigates Sci-Hub founder on suspicion of working for Russian intelligence; The Washington Post, December 19, 2019

Shane Harris and Devlin Barrett, The Washington Post; Justice Department investigates Sci-Hub founder on suspicion of working for Russian intelligence


"Elbakyan’s work has been the subject of legal and ethical controversy. In 2017, a New York district court awarded $15 million in damages to Elsevier, a leading science publisher, for copyright infringement by Sci-Hub and other sites...

Sci-Hub has made millions of documents available to users around the world, said Andrew Pitts, the managing director of PSI, an independent group based in England that advocates for legitimate access to scholarly content.

Pitts said there are 373 universities in 39 countries “that have suffered an intrusion from Sci-Hub,” which he defined as “using stolen credentials to illegally enter a university’s secure network.” More than 150 of the institutions are in the United States, Pitts said...

“She is the Kim Dotcom of scholarly publications,” said Joseph DeMarco, an attorney in New York who represented Elsevier in its lawsuit against Elbakyan. (Dotcom ran a famous file-sharing site that U.S. authorities said violated copyright law.)"

US hammers Huawei with 23 indictments for alleged trade secret theft, fraud; CNet, January 29, 2019

Abrar Al-Heeti, CNet; US hammers Huawei with 23 indictments for alleged trade secret theft, fraud

"The US Department of Justice on Monday charged Huawei with theft of trade secrets, wire fraud and obstruction of justice.

A 10-count indictment alleges that China's Huawei stole trade secrets from US carrier T-Mobile beginning in 2012. Huawei also allegedly offered bonuses to employees who stole confidential information from companies. In addition, a 13-count indictment charged four defendants, including Huawei and Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, with financial fraud. The indicted defendants also include affiliates Huawei USA and Skycom.

"The charges unsealed today clearly allege that Huawei intentionally conspired to steal the intellectual property of an American company in an attempt to undermine the free and fair global marketplace," said FBI Director Christopher Wray in a statement. "To the detriment of American ingenuity, Huawei continually disregarded the laws of the United States in the hopes of gaining an unfair economic advantage.""

U.S. charges Chinese spies and their recruited hackers in conspiracy to steal trade secrets; The Washington Post, October 30, 2018

Ellen Nakashima, The Washington Post; U.S. charges Chinese spies and their recruited hackers in conspiracy to steal trade secrets

[Kip Currier: Just lectured on Trade Secrets in my IP course yesterday. So it was timely to see this recent development after class.

The U.S. and E.U. have both beefed up trade secret protection and prosecution mechanisms in just the past two years: the U.S., with the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016, and the E.U., via its E.U. Trade Secrets Directive (EUTSD).]

"The Justice Department on Tuesday unsealed charges against 10 Chinese spies, hackers and others accused of conspiring to steal sensitive commercial airline and other secrets from U.S. and European companies.

The indictment marks the third time since September that the United States has brought charges against Chinese intelligence officers and their recruits for stealing American intellectual property.

“This is just the beginning,” Assistant Attorney General John Demers said. “Together with our federal partners, we will redouble our efforts to safeguard America’s ingenuity and investment.”"

USPTO Fights Fraudulent Trademark Solicitations; Guest blog by Commissioner for Trademarks Mary Boney Denison, Director's Forum: A Blog from USPTO's Leadership, 12/21/16

Guest blog by Commissioner for Trademarks Mary Boney Denison, Director's Forum: A Blog from USPTO's Leadership; USPTO Fights Fraudulent Trademark Solicitations:

"The USPTO has worked hard to fight solicitations from companies fraudulently promising to protect trademarks, and we have taken a number of steps to help raise awareness of these schemes in an attempt to limit the number of victims defrauded. Our agency works closely with federal agencies, including the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and the United States Postal Inspection Service to combat the problem...

A registered trademark is a valuable asset, and where there’s money, unfortunately, there are bound to be criminal elements lurking. The USPTO continues to provide its ongoing full support to U.S. law enforcement officials working on this issue."

U.S. Justice Department Defends Copyright Anti-Hacking Law as "Unquestionably Constitutional"; Hollywood Reporter, 9/30/16

Eriq Gardner, Hollywood Reporter; U.S. Justice Department Defends Copyright Anti-Hacking Law as "Unquestionably Constitutional" :

"The U.S. Department of Justice is demanding an end to a lawsuit that challenges the constitutionality of a law that prevents people from getting around the access restrictions on copyrighted works such as films, television shows and songs.

In July, the Electronic Frontier Foundation led the lawsuit that argues that the anti-circumvention provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (Sec. 1201) inhibits free expression in violation of the First Amendment. The law allows for a triennial review where every three years the Librarian of Congress grants exemptions. For example, in the most recent review, the government made it legal to hack a smart TV to achieve interoperability and also allowed grade school teachers to circumvent access controls on DVDs for educational purposes."

Alleged video pirate Kim Dotcom loses in U.S. appeals court; Politico, 8/12/16

Josh Gerstein, Politico; Alleged video pirate Kim Dotcom loses in U.S. appeals court:

"A panel of the Richmond-based 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled, 2-1, that Dotcom—the swashbuckling founder of the once-highly-popular file-sharing website Megaupload—could not recover his assets because he remains a fugitive from criminal charges of racketeering, conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and conspiracy to commit money laundering in a scheme that allegedly caused $500 million in damages to the motion picture industry.

"The refusal to face criminal charges that would determine whether or not the claimants came by the property at issue illegally supports a presumption that the property was, indeed, so obtained," Judge Roger Gregory wrote in an opinion joined by Judge Allyson Duncan."

The DOJ's Copyright Fetish Might Screw Up the Internet's Future; Forbes, 6/9/15

Marvin Ammori, Forbes; The DOJ's Copyright Fetish Might Screw Up the Internet's Future:

"The DOJ asked the Supreme Court not to review a lower court decision that said API interfaces are copyrightable. But that decision threatens new and existing websites and devices that we all rely on. Hopefully, the Supreme Court will ignore the DOJ’s recommendation and eventually reverses the lower court.

“But what’s an API?” you ask. API stands for “application programming interface” and is essentially a way for software developers to interact with information on other sites or on their own sites. When you go to a restaurant’s website and see an embedded map of the location, the restaurant’s developers didn’t create the map from scratch. They merely used an API—perhaps the Google Maps or Mapbox API—to get a map for the location. An API lets one company build on another’s innovation; we don’t all have to create a global mapping company merely to give directions to our restaurants. An API obviously has two parts: the interface and the code behind it. The interface is essentially a shortcut available to others (imagine “1899 M St. NW location” or some other shortcut that probably every map developer already knows) and the code behind it is all the complicated computer lines that create the visual map.

The case at issue involves whether the interfaces—just the shortcuts, not the code behind it—are copyrightable. It arises out of a lawsuit between Oracle and Google concerning the Java programming language. Computer programmers use a variety of “languages” to create websites and apps—they’re called Ruby on Rails, Python, Erlang, C+, Basic, and so on. Some languages are more popular than others, the same way English is more popular than Icelandic or Dutch."

Feds seize 82 domains accused of selling counterfeit goods; ArsTechnica.com, 11/29/10

Matthew Lasar, ArsTechnica.com; Feds seize 82 domains accused of selling counterfeit goods:

"The Department of Justice has obtained seizure orders against a slew of commercial websites accused of selling a wide variety of counterfeit commodities, including DVD box sets, music, software, sports equipment and handbags—82 sites all told."

http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2010/11/feds-seize-82-domains-selling-counterfeit-goods.ars

Online IP protection bill sparks outrage; Computer World, 9/29/10

Jaikumar Vijayan, Computer World; Online IP protection bill sparks outrage: Privacy groups, tech gurus call proposed legislation an attempt by the U.S to censor Internet content:

"Proposed federal legislation that would require domain registrars, Internet Service Providers and others to block access to Web sites that the U.S. contends contribute to copyright infringement has generated outrage among privacy advocates and prominent industry personalities."

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9188618/Online_IP_protection_bill_sparks_outrage

Publishers get together to beat down pirates [Updated]; ComicBookResources.com, 5/5/10

Brigid Alverson, ComicBookResources.com; Publishers get together to beat down pirates [Updated]:

"The FBI has served a warrant on the pirate site HTMLcomics.com and shut down their servers.

Acting on a warrant that alleged criminal copyright infringement, they shut down the site and confiscated the servers, according to this press release from the law firm Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP.

According to the release, DC, Marvel, Dark Horse Comics, Bongo Comics, Archie Comics, Conan Properties Int’l LLC, Mirage Studios Inc., and United Media set aside their differences, formed a consortium, and lawyered up in order to shut down the site, which claimed an average of 1.6 million visits per day and offered 6,630,021 pages of comics available for unrestricted reading.

Rich Johnston blogged about these guys a few weeks ago, noting that they claimed that they weren't violating any copyright laws because they make the pages available for viewing online but not for download. Of course, it took his commenters about 30 seconds to defeat that, and anyway, the Department of Justice begs to differ with them on the legal issues.

UPDATE: Colleen Doran has some experience with this site and its proprietor."

http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2010/05/publishers-get-together-to-beat-down-pirates/