Library.nu, previously called ebooksclub.org from 2004 to 2007 and gigapedia.com from 2007 to 2010, was a popular linking website. It was accused of

copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, s ...

and was shut down by court order on February 15, 2012. According to the takedown notice, it hosted some 400,000 ebooks.

Operators

According to an article posted in the British ''

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...

'', investigators believed that library.nu was operated by Irish nationals, possibly from

Galway Galway ( ; ga, Gaillimh, ) is a City status in Ireland, city in the West Region, Ireland, West of Ireland, in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Connacht, which is the county town of County Galway. It lies on the River Corrib between Lo ...

, through a server in

Kyiv Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the List of European cities by populat ...

Injunction

This website was targeted by coordinated legal action from 17 publishers who obtained an

injunction An injunction is a legal and equitable remedy in the form of a special court order that compels a party to do or refrain from specific acts. ("The court of appeals ... has exclusive jurisdiction to enjoin, set aside, suspend (in whole or in pa ...

from a

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

court. The majority of the claimed infringing files were hosted on the iFile.it

file hosting service A file-hosting service, cloud-storage service, online file-storage provider, or cyberlocker is an internet hosting service specifically designed to host user files. It allows users to upload files that could be accessed over the internet afte ...

, whose representatives however disclaimed a close relationship with Library.nu. In contrast, a representative of a private intellectual property agency hired by the book publishers stated that the "owners and directors of iFile.it" were the persons whose names appeared on the receipts of PayPal donations to Library.nu. According to TorrentFreak, "the legal team of the publishers estimated the revenue based on page impressions as well as estimated income from premium accounts, but this figure is laughable according to the iFile.it owner, which makes sense considering the site’s modest size." The iFile.it owner also told TorrentFreak that "they can barely cover the server costs with the revenue they make."

Aftermath

The URL "library.nu" was revoked by the

.nu .nu is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) assigned to the island state of Niue. It was one of the first ccTLDs to be marketed to the Internet at large as an alternative to the gTLDs .com, .net, and .org. Playing on the phonetic ...

domain on 20 February 2012. Between the day of indictment and 24 February, library.nu redirected to

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical c ...

Operators

Injunction

Aftermath

See also

References

Further reading