A federal court has ordered search engines and internet service providers to stop linking to a site that pirates scientific papers published by the American Chemical Society, Science magazine reported Monday.

ACS filed a lawsuit against the site Sci-Hub in June for reproducing paywalled scientific papers published by the society. The site openly touts the fact it pirates copyrighted material, but its founder is based in Russia and therefore out of reach of U.S. courts.

The lack of U.S. jurisdiction has frustrated efforts to collect monetary damages from Sci-Hub. As a result, ACS asked the U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia to order search engines and other services providers on the internet to block access to the site. The court did just that in its ruling as well as award $4.8 million in damages to ACS.

"The court's affirmative ruling does not apply to search engines writ large, but only to those entities who have been in active concert or participation with Sci-Hub, such as websites that host ACS content stolen by Sci-Hub," ACS spokesman Glenn Ruskin told Science. "ACS will now look to identify said entities and seek enforcement accordingly."

At least one tech industry association is worried about precedent being set by the ruling. The Computer and Communications Industry Association filed an amicus brief in the case asking the court to reject the request to block internet search engine results, saying federal law bars such action from taking place. http://bit.ly/2AjHE3o

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