Sci-Hub, which is regularly referred to as the "Pirate Bay of science," faces another setback in a US federal court. After the site's operator failed to respond, the American Chemical Society now requests a default judgment of $4.8 million for alleged copyright infringement. In addition, the publisher wants a broad injunction which would require search engines and ISPs to block the site.

In June, a New York District Court handed down a default judgment against Sci-Hub.

The pirate site, operated by Alexandra Elbakyan, was ordered to pay $15 million in piracy damages to academic publisher Elsevier.

With the ink on this order barely dry, another publisher soon tagged on with a fresh complaint. The American Chemical Society (ACS), a leading source of academic publications in the field of chemistry, also accused Sci-Hub of mass copyright infringement.

Founded more than 140 years ago, the non-profit organization has around 157,000 members and researchers who publish tens of thousands of articles a year in its peer-reviewed journals. Because many of its works are available for free on Sci-Hub, ACS wants to be compensated.

Sci-Hub was made aware of the legal proceedings but did not appear in court. As a result, a default was entered against the site, and a few days ago ACS specified its demands, which include $4.8 million in piracy damages.

“Here, ACS seeks a judgment against Sci-Hub in the amount of $4,800,000—which is based on infringement of a representative sample of publications containing the ACS Copyrighted Works multiplied by the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 for each publication,” they write.

The publisher notes that the maximum statutory damages are only requested for 32 of its 9,000 registered works. This still adds up to a significant sum of money, of course, but that is needed as a deterrent, ACS claims.

“Sci-Hub’s unabashed flouting of U.S. Copyright laws merits a strong deterrent. This Court has awarded a copyright holder maximum statutory damages where the defendant’s actions were ‘clearly willful’ and maximum damages were necessary to ‘deter similar actors in the future’,” they write.

Although the deterrent effect may sound plausible in most cases, another $4.8 million in debt is unlikely to worry Sci-Hub’s owner, as she can’t pay it off anyway. However, there’s also a broad injunction on the table that may be more of a concern.

The requested injunction prohibits Sci-Hub’s owner to continue her work on the site. In addition, it also bars a wide range of other service providers from assisting others to access it.

Specifically, it restrains “any Internet search engines, web hosting and Internet service providers, domain name registrars, and domain name registries, to cease facilitating access to any or all domain names and websites through which Defendant Sci-Hub engages in unlawful access to [ACS’s works].”

The above suggests that search engines may have to remove the site from their indexes while ISPs could be required to block their users’ access to the site as well, which goes quite far.

Since Sci-Hub is in default, ACS is likely to get what it wants. However, if the organization intends to enforce the order in full, it’s likely that some of these third-party services, including Internet providers, will have to spring into action.

While domain name registries are regularly ordered to suspend domains, search engine removals and ISP blocking are not common in the United States. It would, therefore, be no surprise if this case lingers a little while longer.

Update: Sci-Hub is reportedly shutting down its service in Russia as Alexandra Elbakyan feels that local scientists are running a smear campaign against her.

“Recently, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences decided to name a parasitic insect in honor of Alexandra,” a public statement reads.

“What I consider to be an extreme injustice: if you analyze the situation with scientific publications, the real parasites are scientific publishers, and Sci-Hub, on the contrary, fights for equal access to scientific information and makes a useful case.”

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A copy of ACS’s proposed default judgment, obtained by TorrentFreak, is available here (pdf).