By Blake Brittain

June 16 (Reuters) - A group of major book publishers including the "Big Five" English-language book publishing houses — Hachette ALHG.PA, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster — sued an alleged pirated book website for copyright infringement in New York federal court on Tuesday.

The publishers said in the complaint that WeLib hosts tens of millions of pirated books and provides access to tech companies for their AI training. They said WeLib copied the source code and contents of Anna's Archive, another prominent pirate-book site that the publishers sued in March.

A federal judge ordered Anna's Archive to cease its operations in May.

Spokespeople for WeLib did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit filed Tuesday.

“Today’s action is part of our ongoing and vigorous response to the mass theft of literary works, which has no place in the modern world and cannot be tolerated," Maria Pallante, president of the publishers' trade union the Association of American Publishers, said in a statement.

The complaint said that WeLib has more than 80,000 monthly users who have illegally accessed more than 51 million books over the past month including college textbooks and acclaimed novels.

The lawsuit also accused WeLib of soliciting "donations" from artificial intelligence companies in exchange for providing high-speed access to its pirated books for AI training specifically. The publishers alleged in a separate lawsuit last month that Meta used WeLib material to train its Llama large language models.

The publishers asked the court to shut down the site and requested damages of up to $150,000 per pirated work.

The case is Apress Media LLC v. WeLib, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 1:26-cv-05064.

For the publishers: Jennifer Pariser, Matthew Oppenheim and Keith Howell of Oppenheim + Zebrak

For WeLib: attorney information not yet available

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