Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed the indictment and complaint against two alleged operators of Z-Library.
Following an FBI investigation, the authorities identified Russian nationals Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova as prime suspects. The pair were arrested in Argentina and now await potential extradition to the United States.
There’s little doubt that Z-Library helped to distribute millions of copyrighted books. Publishers have been aware of this for a long time and urged law enforcement to take action.
While it was the US Department of Justice that ultimately took action, these large-scale operations often rely on international cooperation. In some cases this is evident; when Argentinian authorities helped to arrest the two suspects, for example.
BREIN Pinpointed Z-Library Suspects
Most instances of information sharing take place behind the scenes so are not immediately visible. For example, Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN indirectly contributed to the recent actions against Z-Library. Without an announcement, that’s unlikely to have seen the light of day.
“The [Z-Library] investigation and action relied on multiple sources, including an extensive report by BREIN from 2020,” the anti-piracy group wrote this week.
This statement piqued our interest. To find out more we reached out to the anti-piracy group to ask for more details on the report’s content. According to BREIN director Tim Kuik, the information wasn’t shared with the authorities directly.
“We sent our report to relevant publishers, not directly to US authorities,” Kuik clarifies.
The report is not publicly available but Kuik says it included information about several Z-Library suspects, which proved useful to US authorities.
“[The report] outlined the domains and identified a number of suspects involved. We understand we were one of several sources of information. As is usual law enforcement authorities will do their own investigation before taking action,” Kuik tells us.
At the time, BREIN had already taken action against Z-Library. The site was disconnected by its Dutch hosting company following a complaint from the anti-piracy group. It then relocated to another country where it continued its activities.
Comeback Will Have Consequences
Two years later, BREIN’s report assisted the criminal investigation that led to the prosecution of two defendants. In addition, more than 240 domain names were seized by U.S. law enforcement, effectively wiping the site from the regular ‘surface’ web.
Z-Library hasn’t thrown the towel completely though. Despite some technical issues earlier this week, it remains accessible on the Tor network. In addition, it’s still operating on the peer-to-peer I2P service.
How many Z-Library team members are still in place is unknown. The site published a blog post last weekend, asking authors for forgiveness, but there’s no indication that it will throw the towel.
BREIN is aware of these developments and says that it’s keeping an eye on things. If Z-Library returns to the surface web, the group plans to obtain a court order to have their domains blocked by Dutch ISPs.
These are tough words but they also beg a question: why doesn’t BREIN request blocking orders for other large shadow libraries right away? After all, there’s no shortage of book piracy sites.
While there are no blocking requests active right now, BREIN’s director says that other book piracy sites could also be targeted in the future.
“Any structurally infringing site eventually will become subject to a blocking order if it persists in its illegal activities,” Kuik adds.
