Court Orders WeLib to Pay Publishers $19,500,000

On 9 November 2026, Judge Victor Marrero entered a default judgment ordering WeLib and Does 1-10 to pay 13 publishers $19,500,000 for willful copyright infringement, the order says. The case is Apress Media, LLC and the other publishers against WeLib, No. 1:26-cv-05064-VM, in the Southern District of New York, the order says. It is Document 23, filed 11/09/26, the order says. The operators did not answer.

The complaint was filed on 16 June 2026, for direct copyright infringement, the order says. The publishers moved for default judgment on 12 October 2026, the order says. The court granted that motion. Judgment is for the publishers on the infringement claim.

What each house is owed

Under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c)(2), the order awards each of the 13 plaintiffs statutory damages for willful infringement. For every one of the 10 works that plaintiff owns, listed on Exhibit A to the complaint, the figure is $150,000.00. Each plaintiff therefore takes $1,500,000, and the 13 houses together take $19,500,000.

The plaintiffs named in the caption are Apress Media, LLC; Cengage Learning, Inc.; Elsevier Inc.; Hachette Book Group, Inc.; HarperCollins Publishers LLC; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishing Group, LLC, doing business as Macmillan Learning; Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC, doing business as Macmillan Publishers; McGraw Hill LLC; Pearson Education, Inc.; Penguin Random House LLC; Simon and Schuster, LLC; and Taylor & Francis Group LLC.

Service, silence, then a clerk's default

The publishers served the summons and complaint on 14 July 2026, by electronic mail, under the court's 13 July 2026 order allowing electronic service, the order says. WeLib and Does 1-10 did not answer or otherwise defend. The publishers moved for a clerk's certificate of default on 13 August 2026, the order says. The clerk entered that certificate on 19 August 2026, the order says.

They gave notice of the default-judgment motion on 12 October 2026, again by electronic mail, under the same July order, the order says.

Destroy the copies, and stay off the works

Under 17 U.S.C. § 503(b), the defendants must immediately destroy every copy of a work owned or controlled by any plaintiff that they obtained without that plaintiff's authorization, the order says. Within ten business days after service of the judgment, they must file a report under penalty of perjury. The report has to describe how they complied, and it has to give a valid mailing address, telephone number, and email address for WeLib and for each managing agent.

The injunction runs anywhere in the world. It binds the defendants and anyone in active concert with them. They may not host, copy, distribute, index, stream, or otherwise use the works. They may not help anyone else do that, including via BitTorrent, the order says. They also may not transfer the registration of the site's domain names. The order names welib.org and welib.st in that list. The next name in the same sentence is broken across a line in the filed text, welib- at the end of one line and public.org at the start of the next, so this account does not treat the hyphen as settled.

Registries and hosts

Once they know of the judgment, registries and registrars for those domains, and the hosting and internet providers for the sites, have work to do, the order says. Access to the domains must be permanently disabled, and a transfer to anyone other than the publishers must be stopped. The authoritative nameservers must be disabled. Hosting of the sites, or of other sites that host the infringing content or directly help distribute it, must stop. Evidence that could identify who is using the domains or running the sites must be preserved.

The order names Public Interest Registry, Cloudflare Inc., Tucows Domains Inc., Njalla SRL, and Njalla Okta LLC. It also covers any other registry, registrar, host, or access provider, now or later.

The defendants may ask for relief from paragraph 5(e) and paragraph 6 only after they have satisfied paragraphs 3 and 4 in full and complied in full with paragraph 5, the order says. Paragraph 3 is the money. Paragraph 4 is the destruction and the sworn report. Paragraph 5 is the injunction. Paragraph 6 is the duty laid on registries and hosts.

The publishers must serve the judgment on the defendants within 2 business days, by the same electronic means, the order says. The court keeps jurisdiction to enforce it.

Marrero signed the order as a United States district judge. It records that it was entered on the 9th day of November, 2026.

Photo: Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse, Manhattan, 17 May 2012. The building houses the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Photo by Ken Lund, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.