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French Pirate Site Blocking Order Targets Expired and Seized Z-Library Domains

A few weeks before the U.S. Department of Justice announced the criminal prosecution of two alleged Z-Library operators in 2022, the French Publishers Union (SNE) had already targeted the site indirectly.

In August that year, SNE obtained an order at a Paris Court, requiring French ISPs to block more than 200 domain names.

By November 2022, the order was largely moot. U.S. authorities didn’t just call for the arrest of two people connected to the site in Argentina, the feds also seized the majority of the shadow library’s domain names.

In theory, this chain of events shouldn’t be a problem for the publishers but it ended up working against them as Z-Library didn’t fold. The site registered dozens of new domain names and continued operations after a short hiatus.

As a result, the earlier blocking victory turned out to be short-lived. The new domain names rendered the hard-fought Z-Library blockades useless and French readers continued to flock to the site.

Legally, there was no easy solution to add new domains, so SNE eventually had to go back to court, which it did this spring. Armed with a list of nearly a hundred new domain names, supported by the earlier win, there was little doubt that the Paris Court would rule in favor of an expansion.

Court Grants New Z-Library Blockades

Yesterday, Marc Rees at L’informé reported that the Tribunal Judiciaire de Paris signed a new blocking order on SNE’s request. The action targets 98 domain names in total, which were found to be predominantly copyright infringing.

As is often the case in these blocking procedures, the rightsholders supplied the necessary evidence. In this case, they presented analyses from anti-piracy outfit LeakID, which found that in a sample of 500 works listed on Z-Library, 83% were from SNE publishers.

“SNE established in a sufficiently convincing manner that the disputed site, which is aimed at a French-speaking audience, allows Internet users […] to download protected works from links without having the authorization of the rights holders, which constitutes copyright infringement,” the court concluded.

Bittersweet

The publishers will be pleased that the court granted their extended Z-Library blocking request. However, this is yet another bittersweet victory; perhaps more bitter than sweet.

Firstly, Z-Library can circumvent the blocking measures without much effort by registering new domain names. The court recognized the ‘dynamic’ nature of the problem but the order doesn’t allow the publishers to add new domains on their own accord.

If SNE wants to block additional domain names in the future, it must go back to court. This update process can take weeks, if not months, after which the same cycle can start all over again.

Blocking Seized Domains

The second ‘bittersweet’ element is related to this blocking lag. SNE submitted its recent blocking request on May 21st this year, just a few days before the FBI carried out its latest round of Z-Library domain seizures.

As a result, the majority of the Z-Library domain names listed in the latest court order no longer pose a threat. Put differently, French ISPs have been ordered to block dozens of domain names that have a prominent seizure banner, and are no longer controlled by Z-Library.

These seized domains include go-to-zlibrary.se, singlelogin.se, booksc.eu, zlibrary-fr.se, zlibrary-redirect.se, z-library.se, go-to-zlibrary.se and many others (full list here).

One of the ‘blocked’ Z-Library domains

Other ‘blocked’ domain names have expired in recent months and become available for registration again. That applies to frenchbooks.se, greek-books.se, korean-books.se, and many more. A few other domains appear to be parked.

Expired and available

This means that, of the 98 domain names targeted in the latest court order, only nine are still active today. The others haven’t been available for weeks and Z-Library has put up several replacement domains, which are not covered by the blocking order.

It’s not difficult to see how this whole process must be a massive source of frustration for the publishers. If they go back to court, this will likely serve as an example of why more ‘flexible’ blocking measures are needed.

At the same time, it begs the question of why the Paris court grants a new blocking order for domain names that no longer link to any infringing material, as well as domains that have expired.



The court order, as published by L’informé, lists the following 98 domain names that ISPs are required to block:

– go-to-zlibrary.se (seized)
– singlelogin.se (seized)
– booksc.eu (seized)
– cn1lib.is (not loading)
– zlibrary-africa.se (parked)
– zlibrary-es.se (seized)
– afrikaans-books.se (expired)
– arabic-books.se (expired)
– azerbaijani-books.sk
– bengali-books.se (expired)
– bulgarian-books.se (expired)
– catalan-books.se (expired)
– croatian-books.se (expired)
– frenchbooks.se (expired)
– german-books.se (expired)
– go-to-zlibrary.se (seized)
– greek-books.se (expired)
– hebrew-books.se (expired)
– hindi-books.se (expired)
– hungarian-books.se (expired)
– indonesian-books.se (expired)
– italian-books.se (expired)
– japanese-books.se (expired)
– kazakh-books.sk
– korean-books.se (expired)
– latin-books.sk
– latvian-books.se (expired)
– portuguese-books.se (expired)
– russian-books.se (expired)
– serbian-books.se (expired)
– singlelogin.re
– slovak-books.sk
– spanish-books.se (expired)
– swedish-books.se (expired)
– turkish-books.se (expired)
– ukrainian-books.se (expired)
– urdu-books.sk
– z-library.se (seized)
– zlibrary-ae.se (seized)
– zlibrary-ar.se (seized)
– zlibrary-sg.se (seized)
– zlibrary-sk.se (seized)
– zlibrary-sng.se (seized)
– zlibrary-th.se (seized)
– zlibrary-tr.se (seized)
– zlibrary-tw.se (seized)
– zlibrary-ua.se (seized)
– zlibrary-vn.se (seized)
– zlibrary-za.se (seized)
– lithuanian-books.se (expired
– malayalam-books.sk
– pashto-books.sk
– polish-books.se (expired)
– zlibrary-asia.se
– zlibrary-at.se (seized)
– zlibrary-au.se (seized)
– zlibrary-be.se (seized)
– zlibrary-bg.se (seized)
– zlibrary-bl.se (seized)
– zlibrary-br.se (seized)
– zlibrary-by.se (seized)
– zlibrary-ca.se (seized)
– zlibrary-ch.se (seized)
– zlibrary-china.se (parked)
– zlibrary-cl.se (seized)
– zlibrary-cz.se (seized)
– zlibrary-de.se (seized)
– zlibrary-east.se (parked)
– zlibrary-eg.se (seized)
– zlibrary-es.se (seized)
– zlibrary-et.se (seized)
– zlibrary-fr.se (seized)
– zlibrary-fr.se (seized)
– zlibrary-global.se (seized)
– zlibrary-gr.se (seized)
– zlibrary-hk.se (seized)
– zlibrary-hu.se (seized)
– zlibrary-id.se (seized)
– zlibrary-in.se (seized)
– zlibrary-ir.se(seized)
– zlibrary-it.se (seized)
– zlibrary-jp.se (seized)
– zlibrary-kp.se (seized)
– zlibrary-kr.se (seized)
– zlibrary-lk.se (seized)
– zlibrary-ma.se (seized)
– zlibrary-my.se (seized)
– zlibrary-ng.se (seized)
– zlibrary-nl.se (seized)
– zlibrary-nz.se (seized)
– zlibrary-pb.se (seized)
– zlibrary-ph.se (seized)
– zlibrary-pk.se (seized)
– zlibrary-pl.se (seized)
– zlibrary-pt.se (seized)
– zlibrary-redirect.se (seized)
– zlibrary-ru.se (seized)
– zlibrary-sa.se (seized)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

TorrentFreak 

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