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Anna's Archive Faces Millions in Damages and a Permanent Injunction
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- helloworld42024 2y agoAt this point, we need a service that "offers" an 8-bay (with 12TB? 14TB? drives) full with the whole ~80TB Anna's Archive. It's essentially all of human knowledge and to be frank it belongs to no one - rather...everyone. People can store this at their house, keep it offline. Just to have these seeds of knowledge everywhere. ...I suppose LLM's trained on this data, essentially their model weights and tokenization are a much more efficient way of storing and condensing this 80TB archive?
- falsaberN1 2y agoThe problem with the later is reliability, or rather it's efficient but unreliable. I'd rather overdo my offline storage and figure out some way to script/code my way into searching it in a convenient way.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jononor 2y agoIf the content is to be trustworthy then using LLMs to compress it makes no sense.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- miloignis 2y agoIt's possible to do lossless compression with LLMs, basically using the LLM as a predictor and then storing differences when the LLM would have predicted incorrectly. The incredible Fabrice Bellard actually implemented this idea: https://bellard.org/ts_zip/ https://bellard.org/ts_zip/
- rustcleaner 2y agoCan we do this in physics? Use a universal function approximator to approximate the universe, seek Erf(x)>threshold, interrogate universe for fresh data, retrain new universal approximator, ... loop previous ... , universe in a bottle.
- A_D_E_P_T 2y agoYou can do that sort of thing with a toy universe -- in fact Stephen Wolfram has a number of ongoing projects along broadly similar lines -- but you can't do it in our physical universe. Among other reasons, the universe is to all appearances infinite and simultaneously very complex, therefore it is incompressible and cannot be described by anything smaller than itself, nor can it be encapsulated in any encoding. You can make statistical statements about it -- with, e.g., Ramsey Theory -- but you can never capture its totality in a way that would enable its use in computation. For another thing, toy model universes tend to be straightforwardly deterministic, which is not clearly the case with our physical universe. (It is likely deterministic in ways that are not straightforward from our frame of reference.)
- squigz 2y agoYou dropped a 0. Anna's Archive is currently 862.4 TB
- RachelF 2y agoYes, too much for one person, but collectively it is possible to keep it alive. If anyone wishes to help, you can generate a chunk in 1TB units and seed via BitTorrent here: https://annas-archive.gs/torrents https://annas-archive.gs/torrents
- CamperBob2 2y agoHonestly, if I can't have the whole thing, I'm not going to bother mirroring a 1TB fragment that's worthless by itself to everybody except copyright attorneys. As ndriscoll points out, the only feasible way to distribute an archive of this size is with physical hard drives. I sure wish they would find a reasonably-trustworthy way to offer that.
- squigz 2y agoYou are never going to have a physical copy of the archive. It's nearly a petabyte in size.
- ranger_danger 2y agoI know several datahoarders that have at least 1PB, also archive.org grows by that much at least every day
- squigz 2y agoI assumed that GP was an average person who doesn't have a storage array sitting at home. I'm not really sure why the IA is relevant here
- CamperBob2 2y ago
- xk_id 2y agoI’d rather copy the whole thing down by hand, than rely on a bullshit generator for my access to knowledge.
- GolfPopper 2y agoWhen it comes to the evils (and goods) of copyright, it is hard to go wrong with Thomas Babington Macaulay's address to the House of Commons in 1841[1]: "At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as popular as “Robinson Crusoe” or the “Pilgrim’s Progress” shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress? Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living." He was decrying the increase in term of copyright to life of the author + 50 years. 1.https://www.thepublicdomain.org/2014/07/24/macaulay-on-copyright/ https://www.thepublicdomain.org/2014/07/24/macaulay-on-copyr...
- matheusmoreira 2y agoThat is a powerful address, indeed. Good thing to know even in 1841 people saw what copyright would become today: an intolerable monopoly granted by the government, functionally infinite. Seriously, this text is so great. I read the entire thing. It's nearly two hundred years old and contains everything one needs to know about copyright in 2024. Thank you for posting it.
- jerojero 2y agoPeople didn't want to buy apples new headset because it was too expensive at 3500 dollars. You think anyone would spend 3000 dollars on such a thing? I doubt it.
- account42 2y agoThere are plenty of gadgets that people are willing to spend over 3k dollars on. So it just depends on what value you thing you can get out of it.
- advael 2y agoI feel obligated to say my usual "IP is at this point doing more harm than good" spiel here but don't have the time budget to argue it with people today
- data_maan 2y agoIt's good that you still said it!
- NuSkooler 2y agoI've been trying to convince people of this for years. The problem is from my view, that people have the idea of IP being some sort of the American Dream ingrained in their heads that they can't even reason about anything else.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- noman-land 2y agoWhat's a suitable replacement?
- ElevenLathe 2y agoCopyright should probably grant some benefit to an author, but just the bare minimum necessary to incentivize people to actually submit their work and file for copyright (also, we should resume requiring that you actually file for copyright, as was the case before 1978). This probably means some period of exclusive monetization rights. Anyone should be able to search for and read any filed works for free from the moment they are filed, or possibly after this exclusive monopoly period. Any additional benefits to copyright holders beyond what is needed to make sure we don't lose the works are essentially graft, no different in principle to the medieval church selling lucrative offices. If these things are valuable only because of scarcity, then we are incentivizing scarcity by granting monopoly, so we should do as little of that as we can manage. If they are inherently valuable, they should be as widely disseminated as possible (a cost that government can easily afford given modern technology). If they are worthless, there is no harm in the government keeping a copy anyway.
- data_maan 2y ago"Whether we’re supporting advancements on the leading edge of science or helping children build a strong learning foundation, shared knowledge is the common thread". (source: https://www.oclc.org/en/about.html https://www.oclc.org/en/about.html) Well, now it's shared on a torrent, but I guess for them that was "over shared" lol. Also, they are a library but spent 5 million on cyber defense... seriously??
- aftbit 2y agoYeah why would a library of all places be upset about Anna's Archive? Their whole mission is sharing and preserving knowledge.
- anadem 2y agoMore from OCLC's About page: "Breakthroughs depend on access to knowledge. Together, member institutions, individual librarians, partners, and staff believe in that mission to share knowledge. And we believe that, together, we can do more. Because what is known must be shared."
- data_maan 2y agoWhat is the deal with this Njalla hosting service? Is it really so hard to take sites from there down?
- dtx1 2y agoIt's made by a former piratebay founder. When you buy a domain from them, they act as a middleman and keep legal ownership of the domain thus shielding your PI somewhat from legal enforcement. They claim their hosting is "In secret locations in Sweden". Their LLC is located in Nevis (some tax evasion island). There's also https://1984.hosting/ https://1984.hosting/ which runs a similar operation out of iceland.
- rustcleaner 2y agoSweet! Thanks for the links guys! :^)
- autoexec 2y agoConsidering I haven't managed to run into malware or phishing sites on either of those providers they seem to be doing something right. Why are these so-called "evil" hosting companies less of a problem for me than namecheap, godaddy, and google?
- averageRoyalty 2y agoBecause their primary driven is something other than maximising profits.
- r0ks0n 2y agomaybe you haven't but they exist
- pnw 2y agoSaint Kitts and Nevis is a sovereign state and part of the Commonwealth. It's primary business is tourism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Kitts_and_Nevis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Kitts_and_Nevis
- catlikesshrimp 2y agoMixed feelings about the case. Sharing is the best thing that can happen to knowledge. It is great that gatekeepers lose money over this. However, the blame of the loss might burden oclc, which might have been doing a positive job. https://www.oclc.org/en/about.html https://www.oclc.org/en/about.html
- data_maan 2y agoWhat is OCLCs added value? They didn't create the data
- catlikesshrimp 2y agoUseless in my country because there are no libraries. But I can lookup libraries "Near my country" and beyond. I suppose some libraries will allow ebook loans through worldcat. They seem to be more about sharing within us law without directly charging people. Thats why I said positive. Torrent sharing is better, but idk if that will be sustainable
- knowaveragejoe 2y agoWhat country has no libraries?
- autoexec 2y agoGood question. The internet is full of lies, but it suggests that Papua New Guinea ranks at the bottom since it only has one and that was a gift from Australia.
- bawolff 2y agoOrganizing data is valuable. Not as valuable as the actual data, but its not nothing either.
- freehorse 2y agoSuing Anna's Archive and similar product, eg being the lapdogs of big publishers, it seems. Why else would they care if they had no shared interests with them? MAybe I am missing a way to use their database that makes sense, but for me worldcat is pinterest-level and other SEO-pollution on my search results when I need to find some real information. I do not care if this book is in some library 1000km away. If I need a book I will search in my local ones. Never understood what is the point in what worldcat does but maybe others use it in some way useful to them.
- lynguist 2y agoWhat a ridiculous claim. They call computer hardware and salaries damage. I want a competent judge to make sure that these are not damages and I wish that Anna’s Archive continues to operate in sensible jurisdiction for the foreseeable future. If I had the means I would donate to them.
- teractiveodular 2y agohttps://annas-archive.gs/donate https://annas-archive.gs/donate
- dylan604 2y agoHaving the means normally means the extra finances to give away vs knowing the link to their donation form
- tehwebguy 2y agoArticle says nobody is responding as defendant except one individual who has filed a motion to dismiss based on being misidentified. I don’t know the status of that motion though.
- xiiiixi 2y ago[flagged]
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- ASalazarMX 2y agoThey're just piling on anything they can regardless of reason. A real damage count would be lost sales due to web scraping, but they don't sell anything. > For example, the organization spent $1,548,693 on upgrades for its hardware infrastructure, and an additional $608,069 for a two-year Cloudflare contract [..] Other costs include the salaries of 34 full-time employees, who were tasked with mitigating the harm caused by the attacks, as well as various other investigation, security, and hardware-related costs. > “OCLC has incurred damages of $5,333,064 as a direct result of Anna’s Archive’s cyberattacks, but that amount does not fully compensate OCLC for the harm from Anna’s Archive’s wrongful actions. OCLC continues to suffer from harms that cannot be remedied by monetary damages.” Is web scraping now considered a cyberattack? Was it eating their bandwidth even if it was served through Cloudflare? LOL.
- gmuslera 2y agoAsk Aaron Swartz
- dtx1 2y ago[flagged]
- rustcleaner 2y ago[flagged]
- neilv 2y agoSome friends and family are likely to be on HN, and I'd assume probably don't want to see speculation like that.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoThe conspiracy/speculation on every damn topic around here is getting out of hand.
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- squigz 2y agohttps://annas-archive.gs/torrents https://annas-archive.gs/torrents https://annas-archive.gs/donate https://annas-archive.gs/donate
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- pornel 2y agoThe mistake was calling it Anna's Archive, and not Anna's AI startup.
- freehorse 2y agoThis is the most ridiculous lawsuit ever. How is scrapping publicly available data "hacking"? How is less than 2TB of total bandwidth amount to millions of dollars of damage? Something is off here. Maybe there is some other motivation behind this, like drawing some legal representative of Anna's archive out? It makes no sense otherwise. Considering that high ranking officers of OCLC (taking a look over their executives in [0]) seem deeply intertwined with the book industry, it makes sense that it is used as a proxy for other types of interests. [0] https://www.oclc.org/en/about/leadership.html?cmpcat=md_ab&cmpid=md_ab_leadership https://www.oclc.org/en/about/leadership.html?cmpcat=md_ab&c...
- gmerc 2y agoIt’s great. Maybe we can turn it against OpenAI as established precedent if it happens
- red-iron-pine 2y agoCareful, there may be 2nd order effects there. And that's also a "maybe" -- ruling could go the other way and get even worse.
- viking1066 2y ago[How is scrapping publicly available data "hacking"?] If only someone had told the person that may have caused the death of Aaron Schwarz!!! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Ortiz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Ortiz
- vlark 2y agoAre they going to sue Microsoft next since the database is available publicly on the web?
- langsoul-com 2y agoWhy does cloudflare cost $600k for 2 years? What exactly are they paying for? Surely
- vundercind 2y agoHigh-transfer users can easily pay tens of thousands a month to a CDN. And not even that high an amount of transfer, even. Not like Steam or someone like that. Cloudflare also offers other services and likes to bundle them with their enterprise accounts. They don’t really compete on transfer costs vs other decent CDNs. They prefer you’re using lots of their stuff than just watching the meter every month. They may have been using other services, too.
- udev4096 2y agoWhy not rent servers from hetzner or ovh for a lot less and setup a CDN of their own? Or is it difficult to do that?
- vundercind 2y agoTL;DR actually delivering serious quantities of bits to clients globally is kinda hard and costs real money. The just-rent-servers scheme presents the following issues: 1) Won’t get you anywhere near as good a network of globally-distributed servers. [edit] I mean, maybe, but at that point you’re looking at a fair amount of cost in vendor management—you’ll probably need several hosting providers to even approach it. 2) You need minimum three good full-time ops people to build and support such a thing. What’s the salary on that over two years? Even with Polish salaries or what have you, it’s cheaper, but not cheap. Let’s say $300,000 fully-loaded cost over two years, just for a nice round number, for three ops/sysadmin sorts. Even in cheaper markets, that may be underestimating what it’d take. Halfway there already, and you haven’t rented servers or rack space yet. I’m not gonna claim that your infra will also work far less well and break more often than Cloudflare, because sometimes these sorts of set-ups do end up being rather stable because they can be far simpler and smaller-scale than an as-a-service product, but that is a risk if it’s not done quite well. 3) Server providers may drop you if you get too expensive. Get DDOS’d too much, just use their bandwidth too heavily but within your nominal limits. It’s a risk. 4) Those rented servers do cost money, and add to the operations salaries costs above. Buy servers? Also money, and now you need to rent rack space and bandwidth. 5) Peering agreements for server hosts are sometimes bad. It’s hard to know whether yours is bad until you do something at-scale on it and see support tickets roll in for consistently dial-up speeds for clients who really ought to be seeing better than that. This info doesn’t make service comparison spec sheets. 6) CDNs have usually put in some effort to solve e.g. China deliverability. You’re starting from scratch as far as political difficulties go.
- qingcharles 2y agoRECAP link to the PACER docket copy: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68157923/oclc-online-computer-library-center-inc-v-annas-archive/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68157923/oclc-online-co...
- qingcharles 2y agoLooks like the case is defaulted against the "Anna's Archive" entity, but still ongoing against other defendants, including Maria who has responded with some pretty damned decent filings asserting (fairly correctly as I can see) that the Complaint fails to properly state a claim against them. I don't see a ruling granting Maria's Motion to Dismiss, so that's still in the future. Anyone know the particulars of (federal) legal service by email? I've only ever used the Sheriff for service, by hand to the person or their agent.
- squigz 2y agoThe "evidence" they present for naming that woman as the operator of Anna's Archive seems... flimsy.
- qingcharles 2y agoYeah, I dug into it, seems like they fucked up and just caused her tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees she may never recover. OTOH maybe it is her and she's accidentally done a Ross Ulbricht? (Also, I note Google lists Ulbricht as an "American enterpriser", whatever that is lol)
- lupire 2y agoAnna's Archive provides a free mirror of nonprofit WorldCat data. OCLC should be sending Anna flowers. This smells like an embezzlement scam from an imsider at OCLC.
- cauefcr 2y agoCry some more, Anna's Archive did nothing wrong.
- account42 2y agoWeird to see a supposed non-profit bringing this lawsuit. Does it really serve their mission?
- antistatusquo 2y agoThe Internet Archive faces a similar issue; these corporations prioritize profit and oppose anything that interferes with it.
- antistatusquo 2y agoThe Internet Archive is up against the same issues. Anna Archive is next in line, showing what happens when big corporations go after anything or anyone that threatens their money.