Court Orders Shutdown of Libgen, Bookfi and Sci-Hub - TorrentFreak

"With a net income of more than $1 billion Elsevier is one of the largest academic publishers in the world. Through its ScienceDirect portal the company offers access to millions of scientific articles spread out over 2,200 journals, most of which are behind a paywall. Websites such as Sci-Hub and The Library Genesis Project, or Libgen for short, have systematically breached this barrier by hosting pirated copies of scientific publications as well as mainstream books. Earlier this year one of the largest publishers went into action to stop this threat. Elsevier filed a complaint at a New York District Court, accusing the sites’ operators of systematic copyright infringement. The publisher requested damages and asked for a preliminary injunction to prevent the sites from distributing their articles while the case is ongoing. Late last week District Court Judge Robert Sweet approved the request (pdf), ordering the operators of Sci-Hub.org, Bookfi.org, Elibgen.org and several sister sites to cease their activities. In addition, the responsible domain name registries are ordered to suspend the associated domain names until further notice. Previously the Public Interest Registry (.ORG) refused to do so when Elsevier put in a request, noting that it would require a valid court order to suspend a domain name ..."