Magazine pirating site in crosshairs of British and U.S. publishers

Magazine organizations on both sides of the Atlantic are intent on shutting down the cheeky website mygazines.com, reported last week here to have posted full, current issues of many of Canada's largest and most prominent magazines, including Maclean's, Canadian House & Home, Cottage Life and Canadian Living.

According to a story in the U.K. Press Gazette, some of Britain’s biggest magazine publishers are considering suing the website that threatens to be a magazine version of illegal online music sharing sites.

Mygazines.com displays entire, current and recent, scanned issues of magazines from around the world are available to view in a digital format with page flipping and zoom technology. So far, the Periodical Publishers Association has failed to track down the owner of the site:

James Evans, senior legal executive at PPA, explained: “They’ve made themselves as difficult as possible to get hold of. It’s a case of smoke and mirrors – the website operator is registered in Anguilla in the Caribbean but the ISP, which we think may be hosting it, is based in the US. The main priority is to get the offending content off the website.”

FHM publisher Bauer Consumer Media has said its lawyers are looking into the issue, as have Hachette Fili­pacchi, IPC Media and Condé Nast.

Meanwhile, the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) is also threatening legal action on behalf of its members.

It's a tangled tale; the site is registered to Salveo Limited—a U.K.-based company that sells health and beauty products—and lists its address as a post office box on the Caribbean island of Anguilla—a British territory.