8 ms·

> The thing is, this doesn't even seem particularly useful for average consumers/listeners, since Spotify itself is so convenient, and trying to locate individu

by Aurornis 11mo ago

> The thing is, this doesn't even seem particularly useful for average consumers/listeners, since Spotify itself is so convenient, and trying to locate individual tracks in massive torrent files of presumably 10,000's of tracks each sounds horrible. I wouldn’t be so sure. There are already tools to automatically locate and stream pirated TV and movie content automatic and on demand. They’re so common that I had non-technical family members bragging at Thanksgiving about how they bought at box at their local Best Buy that has an app which plays any movie or TV show they want on demand without paying anything. They didn’t understand what was happening, but they said it worked great. > Definitely wondering if this was in response to desire from AI researchers/companies who wanted this stuff. The Anna’s archive group is ideologically motivated. They’re definitely not doing this for AI companies.

crazygringo 11mo ago
> The Anna’s archive group is ideologically motivated. Very interesting, thank you. So using this for AI will just be a side effect. And good point -- yup, can now definitely imagine apps building an interface to search and download. I guess I just wonder how seeding and bandwidth would work for the long tail of tracks rarely accessed, if people are only ever downloading tiny chunks.
- nutjob2 11mo ago
  I think the people seeding these are also ideologs and so would be interested in also supporting the obscure stuff, maybe more than the popular. There is no way any casual listeners would go to the quite substantial trouble of using these archives. Anyone who wants to listen to unlimited free music from a vast catalog with a nice interface can use YouTube/Google Music. If they don't like the ads they can get an ad blocker. Downloading to your own machine works well too.
5- 11mo ago
[flagged]
- ronsor 11mo ago
  They know about AI companies and don't mind AI companies, but they're not doing it because AI companies.
jsheard 11mo ago
> The Anna’s archive group is ideologically motivated. They’re definitely not doing this for AI companies. They have a page directly addressed to AI companies, offering them "enterprise-level" access to their complete archives in exchange for tens of thousands of dollars. AI may not be their original/primary motivation but they are evidently on board with facilitating AI labs piracy-maxxing.
- BonoboIO 11mo ago
  That made me chuckle, Enterprise Level Access. I mean as ai company, that’s incredibly cheap and instead of torrenting something, why get it. That price is just a fraction of a engineers salary.
  - gmueckl 11mo ago
    But then you have a money trail connecting the company unambiguously to copyright violations on a scale that is arguably larger than Napster.
    - amitav1 11mo ago
      Yeah,how devstating it would be for Anna's Archive to be found skirting copyright laws. Their reputation may never recover. \s
      - hkt 11mo ago
        He meant the AI companies
        pbhjpbhj 11mo ago
        I mean, the same comment applies mutatis mutandis.
      - amitav1 11mo ago
        Ah, yikes, just ignore this comment, my literacy skills failed me here.
cryzinger 11mo ago
> I had non-technical family members bragging at Thanksgiving about how they bought at box at their local Best Buy that has an app which plays any movie or TV show they want on demand without paying anything. They didn’t understand what was happening, but they said it worked great. Sounds like one of these: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/11/is-your-android-tv-streaming-box-part-of-a-botnet/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/11/is-your-android-tv-strea... Probably not your problem to play tech support for these people and explain why being part of a botnet is bad, but mildly concerning nonetheless!
- shaky-carrousel 11mo ago
  Who cares, today is pretty easy to be part of a botnet. Having a slightly outdated lightbulb qualifies, so I'd not bother.
  - Aurornis 11mo ago
    Having an IoT device with security vulnerabilities does not automatically make you vulnerable to botnets because it’s behind your router’s NAT under normal conditions. Botnet infections occur primarily through one of two ways: Vulnerable devices exposed directly to the Internet, or app downloads and installs on persons computing devices. The TV box appears to be a rare hardware version of convincing someone to bring something into their network that compromises it. Usually it’s a software package that they’re convinced to install which brings along the botnet infection Regardless, it’s a weird and dangerous mentality to believe that being part of a botnet is a “who cares” level of concern. Having criminal traffic originate from your network is a problem, but they might also decide to exploit other vulnerabilities some day and start extracting even more from your internal network.
    - shaky-carrousel 11mo ago
      Nope, many IoT devices open ports via UPnP. The biggest botnets are composed of (among other things) smart plugs, baby monitors, doorbells, IP cameras...
sneak 11mo ago
They’re doing it for everyone, so, yes, they are doing it for AI companies.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
shevy-java 11mo ago
> I wouldn’t be so sure. There are already tools to automatically locate and stream pirated TV and movie content automatic and on demand. It may be relevant for those people, but I lost all interest in current TV or streaming stuff. I just watch youtube regularly. What's on is on; what is not on is not really important to me. My biggest problem is lack of time anyway, so I try to reduce the time investment if possible, which is one huge reason why I have zero subscriptions. I just could not keep up with them.
varenc 11mo ago
Spotify is $12/month at most to get unlimited ad-free access to virtually all music. To get access to "all" TV content legally would be hundreds of dollars a month. And for many movies you must buy/rent each individually. And legal TV and movies are much more encumbered by DRM and lock in, limiting the way you can view them. (like many streaming apps removing AirPlay support, or limiting you to 720p in some browsers) I think Spotify wins over pirating because of its relatively low cost and convenience. Pirating TV/Movies have increased as the cost to access them has.
- tsukikage 11mo ago
  Spotify used to be good, but have enshittified their UI past the point of usability for me. It really wants to play me tracks that are profitable for Spotify, not tracks I want to hear. What you say is still true of the Amazon and Apple offerings, though. Haven't tried Youtube Music, so can't comment on that.
  - hnben 11mo ago
    how are some tracks more profitable to spotify than others?
    - hermanzegerman 11mo ago
      They were caught flooding their own playlists with specially for them produced Garbage Music for which they don't have to pay royalties https://liveforlivemusic.com/news/has-spotify-been-creating-its-own-music-to-avoid-paying-royalties-to-artists/ https://liveforlivemusic.com/news/has-spotify-been-creating-...
- gorbachev 11mo ago
  It's not even close to virtually all music. 256M songs doesn't come even close. It's virtually all popular music recently published commercially in the world. It's missing large portions of bootlegs, old music, foreign music, radio shows, mixtapes and live streaming music to list a few prominent categories from music in my private archive of cultural works. Those categories, btw, are well represented by torrents on tracker sites.
silcoon 11mo ago
> The Anna’s archive group is ideologically motivated. Anna’s archive business is stealing copyrighted content and selling access to it. It's not ideologically motivated. What ideology is about pirating books and music where most of the people producing this stuff cannot afford to do it full-time? It's not like pirating movies, software and large videogame studios, which is still piracy, but they also make big money and they don't act all the time in the interests of the users. Writers and musicians are mostly broken. If we sum the rising cost of living, AI generated content and piracy, there's almost no reward left for their work. Anna’s archive is contributing to the art and culture decadence. They sell you premium bandwidth for downloading and training your AIs on copyrighted content, so soon we can all generate more and more slop.
- avoutos 11mo ago
  Agreed. I see far too many people rationalizing piracy as a principled thing to do. Instead of finding ways to improve the market such that the control of content isn't siloed in monopolistic corporations, many celebrate Annas Archive which is itself a more or less monopolistic profit-interested entity. The major difference being that we don't have to pay directly. The cost continues to fall on the writers and artists and the industry suffers.
  - komali2 11mo ago
    > Instead of finding ways to improve the market such that the control of content isn't siloed in monopolistic corporations I always assumed the "Anna" in the name was for "Anarchist." My assumption about the archive is that they don't believe there's an ethical solution to the restriction of access to data that involves a capitalist market.
    - silcoon 11mo ago
      I get your point but then let's not complains if creativity dies and things all look the same. Creative people don't have motivation to produce if they can't make a living out of it.
delusional 11mo ago
> There are already tools to automatically locate and stream pirated TV and movie Before we had spotify we had grooveshark. Streaming pirated content came first, and everything old is new again.
wartywhoa23 11mo ago
> They’re definitely not doing this for AI companies. So it's just yet another instance of enormous luck / annuit coeptis for the wealthy and powerful, then. Such lucky bastards. Whatever happens, does so to their benefit, and all inconvenient questions about the nature of their luck automatically recede into the conspiracy theory domain. And let's not forget that Anna's Archive is also the host to the world's largest pirate library of books and articles.

crazygringo 11mo ago

> The Anna’s archive group is ideologically motivated. Very interesting, thank you. So using this for AI will just be a side effect. And good point -- yup, can now definitely imagine apps building an interface to search and download. I guess I just wonder how seeding and bandwidth would work for the long tail of tracks rarely accessed, if people are only ever downloading tiny chunks.

nutjob2 11mo ago
I think the people seeding these are also ideologs and so would be interested in also supporting the obscure stuff, maybe more than the popular. There is no way any casual listeners would go to the quite substantial trouble of using these archives. Anyone who wants to listen to unlimited free music from a vast catalog with a nice interface can use YouTube/Google Music. If they don't like the ads they can get an ad blocker. Downloading to your own machine works well too.

5- 11mo ago

[flagged]

ronsor 11mo ago
They know about AI companies and don't mind AI companies, but they're not doing it because AI companies.

jsheard 11mo ago

> The Anna’s archive group is ideologically motivated. They’re definitely not doing this for AI companies. They have a page directly addressed to AI companies, offering them "enterprise-level" access to their complete archives in exchange for tens of thousands of dollars. AI may not be their original/primary motivation but they are evidently on board with facilitating AI labs piracy-maxxing.

BonoboIO 11mo ago
That made me chuckle, Enterprise Level Access. I mean as ai company, that’s incredibly cheap and instead of torrenting something, why get it. That price is just a fraction of a engineers salary.
- gmueckl 11mo ago
  But then you have a money trail connecting the company unambiguously to copyright violations on a scale that is arguably larger than Napster.
  - amitav1 11mo ago
    Yeah,how devstating it would be for Anna's Archive to be found skirting copyright laws. Their reputation may never recover. \s
    - hkt 11mo ago
      He meant the AI companies
      - pbhjpbhj 11mo ago
        I mean, the same comment applies mutatis mutandis.
    - amitav1 11mo ago
      Ah, yikes, just ignore this comment, my literacy skills failed me here.

cryzinger 11mo ago

> I had non-technical family members bragging at Thanksgiving about how they bought at box at their local Best Buy that has an app which plays any movie or TV show they want on demand without paying anything. They didn’t understand what was happening, but they said it worked great. Sounds like one of these: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/11/is-your-android-tv-streaming-box-part-of-a-botnet/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/11/is-your-android-tv-strea... Probably not your problem to play tech support for these people and explain why being part of a botnet is bad, but mildly concerning nonetheless!

shaky-carrousel 11mo ago
Who cares, today is pretty easy to be part of a botnet. Having a slightly outdated lightbulb qualifies, so I'd not bother.
- Aurornis 11mo ago
  Having an IoT device with security vulnerabilities does not automatically make you vulnerable to botnets because it’s behind your router’s NAT under normal conditions. Botnet infections occur primarily through one of two ways: Vulnerable devices exposed directly to the Internet, or app downloads and installs on persons computing devices. The TV box appears to be a rare hardware version of convincing someone to bring something into their network that compromises it. Usually it’s a software package that they’re convinced to install which brings along the botnet infection Regardless, it’s a weird and dangerous mentality to believe that being part of a botnet is a “who cares” level of concern. Having criminal traffic originate from your network is a problem, but they might also decide to exploit other vulnerabilities some day and start extracting even more from your internal network.
  - shaky-carrousel 11mo ago
    Nope, many IoT devices open ports via UPnP. The biggest botnets are composed of (among other things) smart plugs, baby monitors, doorbells, IP cameras...

sneak 11mo ago

They’re doing it for everyone, so, yes, they are doing it for AI companies.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

shevy-java 11mo ago

> I wouldn’t be so sure. There are already tools to automatically locate and stream pirated TV and movie content automatic and on demand. It may be relevant for those people, but I lost all interest in current TV or streaming stuff. I just watch youtube regularly. What's on is on; what is not on is not really important to me. My biggest problem is lack of time anyway, so I try to reduce the time investment if possible, which is one huge reason why I have zero subscriptions. I just could not keep up with them.

varenc 11mo ago

Spotify is $12/month at most to get unlimited ad-free access to virtually all music. To get access to "all" TV content legally would be hundreds of dollars a month. And for many movies you must buy/rent each individually. And legal TV and movies are much more encumbered by DRM and lock in, limiting the way you can view them. (like many streaming apps removing AirPlay support, or limiting you to 720p in some browsers) I think Spotify wins over pirating because of its relatively low cost and convenience. Pirating TV/Movies have increased as the cost to access them has.

tsukikage 11mo ago
Spotify used to be good, but have enshittified their UI past the point of usability for me. It really wants to play me tracks that are profitable for Spotify, not tracks I want to hear. What you say is still true of the Amazon and Apple offerings, though. Haven't tried Youtube Music, so can't comment on that.
- hnben 11mo ago
  how are some tracks more profitable to spotify than others?
  - hermanzegerman 11mo ago
    They were caught flooding their own playlists with specially for them produced Garbage Music for which they don't have to pay royalties https://liveforlivemusic.com/news/has-spotify-been-creating-its-own-music-to-avoid-paying-royalties-to-artists/ https://liveforlivemusic.com/news/has-spotify-been-creating-...
gorbachev 11mo ago
It's not even close to virtually all music. 256M songs doesn't come even close. It's virtually all popular music recently published commercially in the world. It's missing large portions of bootlegs, old music, foreign music, radio shows, mixtapes and live streaming music to list a few prominent categories from music in my private archive of cultural works. Those categories, btw, are well represented by torrents on tracker sites.

silcoon 11mo ago

> The Anna’s archive group is ideologically motivated. Anna’s archive business is stealing copyrighted content and selling access to it. It's not ideologically motivated. What ideology is about pirating books and music where most of the people producing this stuff cannot afford to do it full-time? It's not like pirating movies, software and large videogame studios, which is still piracy, but they also make big money and they don't act all the time in the interests of the users. Writers and musicians are mostly broken. If we sum the rising cost of living, AI generated content and piracy, there's almost no reward left for their work. Anna’s archive is contributing to the art and culture decadence. They sell you premium bandwidth for downloading and training your AIs on copyrighted content, so soon we can all generate more and more slop.

avoutos 11mo ago
Agreed. I see far too many people rationalizing piracy as a principled thing to do. Instead of finding ways to improve the market such that the control of content isn't siloed in monopolistic corporations, many celebrate Annas Archive which is itself a more or less monopolistic profit-interested entity. The major difference being that we don't have to pay directly. The cost continues to fall on the writers and artists and the industry suffers.
- komali2 11mo ago
  > Instead of finding ways to improve the market such that the control of content isn't siloed in monopolistic corporations I always assumed the "Anna" in the name was for "Anarchist." My assumption about the archive is that they don't believe there's an ethical solution to the restriction of access to data that involves a capitalist market.
  - silcoon 11mo ago
    I get your point but then let's not complains if creativity dies and things all look the same. Creative people don't have motivation to produce if they can't make a living out of it.

delusional 11mo ago

> There are already tools to automatically locate and stream pirated TV and movie Before we had spotify we had grooveshark. Streaming pirated content came first, and everything old is new again.

wartywhoa23 11mo ago

> They’re definitely not doing this for AI companies. So it's just yet another instance of enormous luck / annuit coeptis for the wealthy and powerful, then. Such lucky bastards. Whatever happens, does so to their benefit, and all inconvenient questions about the nature of their luck automatically recede into the conspiracy theory domain. And let's not forget that Anna's Archive is also the host to the world's largest pirate library of books and articles.