November 9, 2026
Publishers Applaud Default Judgment Against WeLib Pirate Site
Today, November 9, 2026, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge Victor Marrero issued a default judgment in Apress Media, LLC et al. v. WeLib and Does 1-10, an industry-wide infringement suit filed June 16, 2026 against the pirate site WeLib.
The judgment levies the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 for each of the 130 Works in the suit for a total of $19.5 million and orders all domain name registries and registrars to disable access to WeLib domain names and prevent their transfer to anyone other than the plaintiffs. The judgment also directs international providers to stop hosting the site.
Organized with assistance from the Association of American Publishers, the suit included thirteen plaintiffs from across the trade, educational, professional and scientific publishing sectors, seeking permanent injunctive relief for the unauthorized copying and distribution of millions of infringing files, both books and research journal articles. Works of authorship in the suit included bestselling titles and winners of the Man Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award.
This action against WeLib follows a similar case plaintiffs brought earlier this year against the notorious pirate site Anna’s Archive, which was also ordered to cease infringing plaintiffs’ copyrights and pay a judgment of $19.5 million. WeLib obtained plaintiffs’ works by copying them from Anna’s Archive. Publishers alleged that WeLib sought to profit from its infringing activity by offering AI model developers high-speed access to its repository of pirated copies of publishers’ works.
Statement from Lui Simpson, Executive Vice President, Global Policy, Association of American Publishers
“Following on the judgment against Anna’s Archive and with the same remedies now ordered against WeLib, the court has helped to highlight and bring a measure of justice to the industrial scale piracy faced everyday by the publishing enterprise. AI companies should not be patronizing pirate sites to source high-quality materials like books and journals for training large language models. The industry will continue to enforce their valuable copyrights against these pirate sites and we will use these decisions to disrupt and frustrate the activities of pirate enterprises, as we continue, as well, to promote and protect the growing licensing market for AI training.”
The full default judgment can be found here.
About the Plaintiffs
Plaintiffs in Apress Media, LLC et al. v. WeLib and Does 1-10 include Apress Media LLC; Cengage Learning, Inc.; Elsevier Inc.; Hachette Book Group, Inc.; HarperCollins Publishers LLC; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishing Group, LLC d/b/a Macmillan Learning; Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC; McGraw Hill LLC; Pearson Education, Inc.; Penguin Random House LLC; Simon & Schuster, LLC; and Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
The plaintiffs, and other AAP member publishers, publish and curate the important, beloved, and award-winning works of many of the world’s most acclaimed authors as well as leading educators and experts in various educational, scholarly, and scientific fields. They are global leaders who partner with brilliant authors to deliver works that educate, inform, and inspire every type of reader. Moreover, these publishers are investing in artificial intelligence tools to improve business practices and reader experiences while maintaining emphasis on human authorship as the bedrock of creative and scholarly endeavor.