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Posted by askl 2 days ago

Anna's Archive loses $322M Spotify piracy case without a fight(torrentfreak.com)
235 points | 244 commentspage 2
ComputerGuru 1 day ago|
Not sure how I feel. Anna’s Archive turned into a profit-seeking beast a long time ago. They’re also rolling in it thanks to he massive deals to “license” the content to AI companies.

Libgen was a much better option.

squigz 1 day ago|
Profit-seeking? That seems like a stretch.

Also how do you know they have any "massive deals"? Do they publish details about the money they receive?

owlcompliance 1 day ago||
How do people safely download from these torrent sites? Isn't there a risk that you'll download something you wouldn't want on your computer? Yet I hear of many people actively using them, so there must be more to it.
Gander5739 1 day ago||
When you download the torrent file, you're trusting that the provider of the torrent file, anna's archive in this case, is giving you legitimate files. Although I'm not sure how you would disguise undesirable files like viruses as ebooks; the file format would be a giveaway.
DauntingPear7 1 day ago||
Malformed files that are designed to exploit known (or unknown) parsing vulnerabilities in whatever ebook reading software
jansommer 1 day ago|||
It's easy for others to see what you're downloading: https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com. So if you're unsure if the torrent is legitimate, I'd probably avoid it.
bethekidyouwant 1 day ago||
How is a video file a risk? If you mean a game, then yes, you may get a virus.
mhitza 2 days ago||
Extra problems with the copyright industry for no benefit.

Hope the owner's OpSec was good enough and we won't hear about their unmasking.

Cider9986 1 day ago||
They have a 500k[1] reward for finding OPSEC failures, so I think they have the basics down.

[1]https://software.annas-archive.gl/AnnaArchivist/annas-archiv...

HDThoreaun 1 day ago||
No way Anna’s archive has $500k
Cider9986 1 day ago||
Why not? Are they going to scam the person who completes the Google Books bounty for 200k?
fc417fc802 2 days ago|||
Extra? I thought they were clearly violating IP law to begin with. Unless I misunderstand this is "water is wet" territory (both the judgment as well as what Anna's Archive did).
mhitza 2 days ago|||
Extra, because with the piracy of music they bought into equation members of (and implicitly) the recording industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recording_Industry_Association...
ndsipa_pomu 1 day ago||||
Water isn't wet, but it does "wet" other things. Wetness is the degree to which a liquid contacts and adheres to a solid surface, so it's makes no sense to say that water is wet.
shevy-java 1 day ago|||
I do not see any law being violated by Anna's Archive in the slightest.
gertop 1 day ago|||
Just because you disagree with a law doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. You anti copyright shills are exhausting... Why can't you try to attract people to your side to eventually instead effect some real change? Do you just take that much pleasure in being an edgelord that your cause be damned?
bulbar 1 day ago|||
Just use it to train / tune a LLM. Apparently, everything becomes legal if you only put the stuff into the right kind of software.

That's at least what many people like to argue here on HN.

Cider9986 1 day ago||
Anna's wants[1] companies to train on their data.

[1] https://annas-archive.gl/blog/ai-copyright.html

bulbar 1 day ago||
Thanks a lot, that's an interesting read and they make an interesting case.

I would have thought all big AI companies used Anna's Archive, but apparently only some of the US based companies used them.

lifecodes 2 days ago||
hmm you are right, I too wish the same brother
6thbit 1 day ago||
300M come from: Statutory damages for circumvention of a technological measure for 120,000 music files

22M come from: Statutory damages for willful copyright infringement for 148 sound recordings from Sony, Warner and UMG.

Why is it only 148 sound recording with infringed copyright when the 'circunvention' is for 120,000?

badlibrarian 1 day ago|
Different burden of proof. Why waste years trying to get server logs that may not exist when you can get a quick win? It's not about the money anyway. It's about the PR and whatever justification they can derive along the way.
hmokiguess 1 day ago||
Barbra Streisand effect for them, free PR, and lots of money wasted for the other side
bawolff 1 day ago|
At this point everyone who cares about anna's archive already knows about anna's archive.

If the goal is to eventuallu get their domain siezed (forcing them to get a new one and confusing existing users), they probably don't view this as a waste.

Not every lawsuit is the Streisand effect.

hmokiguess 1 day ago||
Fair point, I kinda agree, though I do think they were mostly know for books and music is a whole new sector they entered with a different niche altogether
bawolff 1 day ago||
Fair point, i had no idea they were involved with music before this.
microcode 1 day ago||
I am struggling to see how exactly this is even considered piracy. Nobody was going to stream music in low quality off a slow AA server anyway. It's archival.
hirako2000 1 day ago||
Can't lose a fight against someone who can't catch you.
mothballed 1 day ago|
Sounds like Anna won. Someone else had to spend a bunch of money on a lawsuit against a ghost.
adrian_b 1 day ago||
They have lost a few domain names.

For instance, they previously had a Swedish domain, which was taken down, together with a few others, possibly as a consequence of this lawsuit.

Hopefully they will succeed to keep the others.

hirako2000 1 day ago||
If they lose them they will create new ones, and someone will update the wikipedia page with the active URL(s).

Worst case scenario they could solely rely on Tor URLs, which would be virtually impossible to shut down.

ranger_danger 1 day ago||
> virtually impossible to shut down

It has been proven through at least Snowden files that multiple world governments have been working for decades now to operate as many tor nodes as they can in the hopes of decloaking as much traffic as possible, should they need to go after specific people.

I don't think it's safe to say this is virtually impossible. They have more money and resources than you can fathom.

Even if they don't currently have enough nodes to catch a certain person... should it become more important for them to do so, they could always quickly increase that number on short notice to try to increase the chances of tracking them down as needed.

HDThoreaun 1 day ago||
Governments need tor to work to keep their spy network safe. Running a bunch of nodes to ensure the system is online makes sense for intelligence agencies, no traffic sniffing required.
dmantis 1 day ago||
I hope AA will make an onion version in addition to the unstable domain switching.
ofou 1 day ago||
Demoniac move by Spotify
randomeel 1 day ago|
Annas Archive still has lots of mirrors and can switch domains if its ever taken down
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