Several international websites that publishers argue continue to actively pirate copyrighted material were included on the U.S. Trade Representative’s frighteningly named Notorious Markets List (NML). NML is the centerpiece of the USTR's annual Review of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy, the goal of which is to “motivate appropriate action by the private sector and governments to reduce piracy and counterfeiting.”
The 2024 report features a list of sites that are violating the copyrights of companies across a wide range of industries. Rather than try to document that monetary loss to American companies caused by these websites (though the report does cite a study which found that digital piracy cost the U.S. economy $29.2 billion in 2019), NLM reviews what actions, if any, companies have taken to stop their sites from engaging in piracy.
The two companies that drew the most attention from the Association of American Publishers are Library Genesis, commonly known as Libgen, and Sci-Hub. As part of a series of actions against Libgen, in 2023, textbook publishers filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the company. Libgen, which is believed to operate from Russia and has been used by Meta to train its AI efforts, hosts 80 million science magazine articles, 2.4 million nonfiction books, 2.2 million fiction books, and 2 million comic strips. According to the report, Libgen sites are “subject to court orders in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.”
In 2017, Libgen and Sci-Hub lost a copyright infringement case filed by Elsevier. Nonetheless, the report says that right holders continue to maintain “that Sci-Hub and its mirror sites facilitate unauthorized access to over 88 million journal articles and academic papers.” Some of its material, NML says, is cross-posted to Libgen. In addition to the Elsevier lawsuit in the U.S., the report said “Sci-Hub is reportedly subject to blocking orders in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Spain, and Sweden and is the subject of similar enforcement 31 activity in India that is currently unresolved.”
“This annual report is a critically important tool for identifying online sites and marketplaces that traffic in infringing copies of books and journal articles,” said Lui Simpson, EVP for global policy at the AAP. “On behalf of publishers we thank USTR for their work in protecting the intellectual property of publishers and authors."
