January 30, 2024
2023 USTR Notorious Markets List Issued
AAP Welcomes USTR Review of Notorious Pirate Sites Harmful to Publishers and Authors
Washington, DC; January 30, 2024 —The Association of American Publishers today welcomed the release of the 2023 Review of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). The Notorious Markets List highlights online and physical markets around the world engaged in industrial-scale copyright infringement and counterfeiting, which adversely impacts the interests of U.S. publishers, authors, and other rights holders.
“The publishing industry thanks USTR and the interagency for their work in protecting the intellectual property of publishers and authors, whose livelihoods depend on the protection and enforcement of their rights,” said Lui Simpson, Senior Vice President for Global Policy at AAP. “The Notorious Markets report remains a critical tool for exposing online sites and marketplaces that traffic in infringing copies of books and journal articles.”
The Report highlights the necessity of having an effective framework for dealing with infringement and the complex ecosystem of cyberlockers, domains, hosting providers, social media platforms, caching services and other network management infrastructure that support pirated content, which costs the U.S. economy $29.2 billion a year, and lists a number of harmful pirate sites including Libgen and Sci-Hub, which have been the target of court orders in several countries across Europe, as well as in the U.S., and whose networks hosts a large number of unauthorized digital copies of books, manuals, and journals.
The 2023 USTR Notorious Markets Report can be found here.