Book Publishers Shut Down Library.nu and iFile-it

[Guest Ethan]

Library.nu

The book download portal Library.nu and cyberlocker ifile.it appear to have shut down voluntarily after a coalition of book publishers managed to get an injunction against the two sites. According to the complaint, the sites offered users access to 400,000 e-books and made more than $11 million in revenue in the process.

During the past week users of the popular book downloading portal Library.nu started to notice that the site no longer carried links to files.

Today delivered another surprise when the site suddenly began redirecting to Google books.

Initially it was unclear what motivated the site’s owners to take these drastic actions, but a statement by a coalition of the world’s largest book publishers including Cambridge University Press, Harper Collins, Elsevier and John Wiley & Sons, cleared up the mystery.

The publishers obtained an injunction against Library.nu and the cyberlocker ifile.it from the regional court in Munich. They claimed that both sites were operating an unauthorized “internet library” that made available more than 400,000 high-quality e-books. In addition, the publishers said the sites made $11 million in revenue.

The court agreed with the publishers and the owners of the sites were served with an order to halt their infringing activities.

As a result, both sites have voluntarily pulled their services offline. Library.nu now redirects to Google books and ifile.it has put up a message stating “no upload servers currently available.”

Ifile.it

Responding to the news, the book publishers declared victory.

“This action reflects our commitment to protecting secure, safe, and legitimate use of the Internet,” said Stephen M. Smith, President and CEO of John Wiley & Sons.

“It is also evidence of the growing strength of the international community of content creators and providers taking all available legal measures against large illegal platforms,” he added.

Jens Bammel of the International Publishers Association, the umbrella organization responsible for tracking down the owners of the two sites, described the file-sharing sites as criminal outfits.

“The global publishing industry has once again shown that it can and will stand up against large-scale organised copyright crime,” Bammel says commenting on the news.

“We will not tolerate free-loaders who make unearned profits by depriving authors and publishers of their due compensation. This is an important step towards more transparent, honest, and fair trade of digital content on the Internet,” he added.

Despite the preliminary success, there are no guarantees that both sites will remain inactive. ifile.it, for example, was used for much more than hosting books alone so the site may just be deleting files to comply with the court order. Time will tell if that’s the case.