January 9, 2025
2024 USTR Notorious Markets List Issued
AAP Welcomes USTR Review of Notorious Pirate Sites Harmful to Publishers and Authors
Washington, DC; January 9, 2025 —The Association of American Publishers today welcomed the release of the 2024 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.
“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, Executive Vice President for Global Policy at AAP. “On behalf of publishers we thank USTR for their work in protecting the intellectual property of publishers and authors, whose livelihoods directly depend on the protection and enforcement of their rights,”
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 the distribution of pirated content, and lists a number of harmful pirate sites including Libgen, which, according to the report,“hosts a large number of digital copies of books, manuals, journals, and other works, many of which are unauthorized copies of copyright protected content.” The report also notes that “Libgen sites are subject to court orders in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States.” The report also highlights Sci-Hub which facilitates “unauthorized access to over 88 million journal articles and academic papers, which comprise at least 90% of all toll-access published journal articles.” Sci-Hub is subject to blocking orders in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Spain, and Sweden.
The 2024 USTR Notorious Markets Report can be found here.