KISS LIBRARY ILLEGALLY OBTAINED COPIES OF BOOKS AND EBOOKS AND SOLD ON THEIR SITE – Piracy pure and simple

UPDATE : KISS Library has been shut down by order of a federal judge, due to its failure to respond to the lawsuit.

The sweeping order effectively shuts down the operation in its current iteration, and seeks to block the defendants and any of their service providers—including payment processors, banks, ISPs, back-end service providers, and search engine or ad-word providers—from collaborating to distribute the plaintiff’s copyrighted works in the future.

In 2019, big-name Authors Guild members joined with Amazon Publishing and Penguin Random House in a lawsuit against KISS Library, identifying KISS as a pirate site and demanding that it “be enjoined from illegally copying, distributing, and selling works written or published by the plaintiffs”. This article from Publishing Perspectives provides detail, including statements from Amazon and PRH.

In a statement issued by an Amazon spokesperson to Publishing Perspectives, we read, “Combating piracy requires collaboration across the industry and Amazon Publishing is glad to join together with Penguin Random House and members of the Authors Guild in this suit against book piracy entity KISS Library. We are committed to holding bad actors accountable.”

And Carolyn Foley, Penguin Random House vice president, associate general counsel, tells Publishing Perspectives, “Pirate sites like KISS Library harm authors and publishers and threaten the quality and vitality of the authorship so fundamental to free and healthy democracy; we are proud to stand with our authors, the Authors Guild and Amazon against the scourge of piracy.”