8 ms·

> 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,

by jsheard 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo ago
    Yeah,how devstating it would be for Anna's Archive to be found skirting copyright laws. Their reputation may never recover. \s
    - hkt 10mo ago
      He meant the AI companies
      - pbhjpbhj 10mo ago
        I mean, the same comment applies mutatis mutandis.
    - amitav1 10mo ago
      Ah, yikes, just ignore this comment, my literacy skills failed me here.
  - ls612 10mo ago
    I mean Facebook and Anthropic both torrented LibGen in its entirety.
  - scratchyone 10mo ago
    I believe they're largely targeting foreign companies who don't care much about US copyright law.
j_w 10mo ago
Or they know that those parties are going to hammer their servers no matter what so they will at least try and get some money out of it.
toomuchtodo 10mo ago
You go where the money is. Infra isn’t free. Churches pass the plate every Sunday. Perhaps one day we’ll exist in a more optimal socioeconomic system; until then, you do what you have to do to accomplish your goals (in this context, archivists and digital preservation).
- lurk2 10mo ago
  > Infra isn’t free. There is a certain irony in people providing copyrighted works for free justifying profiting from these copyrights on the basis that providing the works to others isn’t free.
  - toomuchtodo 10mo ago
    Cost recovery isn’t profit. Copyright is just a shared delusion, like most laws. They’re just bits on a disk we’re told are special for ~100 years (or whatever the copyright lockup length is in your jurisdiction), after which they’re no longer special (having entered the public domain). I think what is more ironic is we somehow were comfortable being collectively conditioned (manufactured consent?) with the idea that you could lock up culture for 100 years or more just to enable maximum economic extraction from the concept of “intellectual property” and that to evade such insanity is wrong in some way. “You can just do things” after all.
    - deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
    - noduerme 10mo ago
      It's not the bits that are copyrighted, it's the performance and the creative work. Your savings account is just bits on a disk, yet presumably it represents value that you worked for and which belongs to you to do with what you wish.
      - komali2 10mo ago
        > Your savings account is just bits on a disk, yet presumably it represents value that you worked for and which belongs to you to do with what you wish. That's another example of the shared delusion, since yes, we tell eachother it represents labor and resources, and the market engages in allocation somewhat efficiently, and so the money is a pretty accurate representation of the value of labor and the value of resources. In reality, that's not true, because the most highly compensated jobs are some of the least valuable, such as investment bankers, landlords, or being born rich (which isn't even a job, but is compensated anyway). Rent seeking is one of the most highly compensated things you can do under this system, but also one of the most parasitic and least valuable things. Your savings account's number is totally detached from accurately representing value. It's mostly a representation of where you were born.
ThinkBeat 10mo ago
I think there is a big legal difference between helping preserve books and papers with little regard for copyrights, to then turn around and selling access to large companies.
wartywhoa23 10mo ago
So either these folks, who are admittedly living targets of all the world's copyright lawyers, have means to receive tens of thousands of USD anonymously and stealthily, or they are totally immune to deanon / getting tracked down, or they are stupid enough to allow their greed to become their downfall, or this legend about underground warriors of light fighting against evil copyrighters is utter bullshit.

by jsheard 10mo ago

BonoboIO 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo ago
  Yeah,how devstating it would be for Anna's Archive to be found skirting copyright laws. Their reputation may never recover. \s
  - hkt 10mo ago
    He meant the AI companies
    - pbhjpbhj 10mo ago
      I mean, the same comment applies mutatis mutandis.
  - amitav1 10mo ago
    Ah, yikes, just ignore this comment, my literacy skills failed me here.
- ls612 10mo ago
  I mean Facebook and Anthropic both torrented LibGen in its entirety.
- scratchyone 10mo ago
  I believe they're largely targeting foreign companies who don't care much about US copyright law.

j_w 10mo ago

Or they know that those parties are going to hammer their servers no matter what so they will at least try and get some money out of it.

toomuchtodo 10mo ago

You go where the money is. Infra isn’t free. Churches pass the plate every Sunday. Perhaps one day we’ll exist in a more optimal socioeconomic system; until then, you do what you have to do to accomplish your goals (in this context, archivists and digital preservation).

lurk2 10mo ago
> Infra isn’t free. There is a certain irony in people providing copyrighted works for free justifying profiting from these copyrights on the basis that providing the works to others isn’t free.
- toomuchtodo 10mo ago
  Cost recovery isn’t profit. Copyright is just a shared delusion, like most laws. They’re just bits on a disk we’re told are special for ~100 years (or whatever the copyright lockup length is in your jurisdiction), after which they’re no longer special (having entered the public domain). I think what is more ironic is we somehow were comfortable being collectively conditioned (manufactured consent?) with the idea that you could lock up culture for 100 years or more just to enable maximum economic extraction from the concept of “intellectual property” and that to evade such insanity is wrong in some way. “You can just do things” after all.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - noduerme 10mo ago
    It's not the bits that are copyrighted, it's the performance and the creative work. Your savings account is just bits on a disk, yet presumably it represents value that you worked for and which belongs to you to do with what you wish.
    - komali2 10mo ago
      > Your savings account is just bits on a disk, yet presumably it represents value that you worked for and which belongs to you to do with what you wish. That's another example of the shared delusion, since yes, we tell eachother it represents labor and resources, and the market engages in allocation somewhat efficiently, and so the money is a pretty accurate representation of the value of labor and the value of resources. In reality, that's not true, because the most highly compensated jobs are some of the least valuable, such as investment bankers, landlords, or being born rich (which isn't even a job, but is compensated anyway). Rent seeking is one of the most highly compensated things you can do under this system, but also one of the most parasitic and least valuable things. Your savings account's number is totally detached from accurately representing value. It's mostly a representation of where you were born.

ThinkBeat 10mo ago

I think there is a big legal difference between helping preserve books and papers with little regard for copyrights, to then turn around and selling access to large companies.

wartywhoa23 10mo ago

So either these folks, who are admittedly living targets of all the world's copyright lawyers, have means to receive tens of thousands of USD anonymously and stealthily, or they are totally immune to deanon / getting tracked down, or they are stupid enough to allow their greed to become their downfall, or this legend about underground warriors of light fighting against evil copyrighters is utter bullshit.