On Thursday, some links to the notorious shadow library Library Genesis (Libgen) couldn’t be reached after a US district court judge, Colleen McMahon, ordered what TorrentFreak called “one of the broadest anti-piracy injunctions” ever issued by a US court.
In her order, McMahon sided with textbook publishers who accused Libgen of willful copyright infringement after Libgen completely ignored their complaint.
To compensate rightsholders, McMahon ordered Libgen to pay $30 million, but because nobody knows who runs the shadow library, it seems unlikely that publishers will be paid any time soon, if ever.
Only $30 million? For the amount of content and the convenience, Libgen seems to getting charged pennies on the dollar here. Imagine if the government could make a free online library of that quality for only $30 million, it would be a fantastic investment.