6 ms·

U.S. Court Order Against Anna's Archive Spells More Trouble for the Site

126 points by t-3 9mo ago

qingcharles 9mo ago
God knows how much OCLC spent in legal fees just to get it this far, even without any motions by the other party. What's the point? None of the people using Anna's Archive are potential customers of OCLC. Just lawyers trying to justify their existence.
- kingleopold 9mo ago
  come one, we need lawyers so they can help owners make extra $billions. some lawyers are not humans, they are objects bought with money.literally, no humanity in them.
- mmooss 9mo ago
  Also, isn't OCLC focused on the mission of libraries, which is to distribute knowledge? What is their attitude toward services like Anna's, which accomplishes that mission much better than any OCLC member?
  - rf15 9mo ago
    because The Mission is making money, too.
    - skywal_l 9mo ago
      Exactly, Pournelle's law in full force.
      - nsmdkdfk 9mo ago
        [dead]
  - RobotToaster 9mo ago
    These so called charities have to justify their executives' seven figure salaries somehow. If someone is doing their job better without all the embezzling executives people may start asking inconvenient questions.
    - rahimnathwani 9mo ago
      The CEO's compensation in 2024 was $1.3 million.
      - RobotToaster 9mo ago
        That is seven figures, no?
  - hopelite 9mo ago
    The fact that such an organization is focused on the inverse of the mission one would expect should tell people more than enough. Unfortunately, most people simply rely on their preconceived notions about most things, even when faced with a stark contrast in reality. I can tell you from direct contact with many of these “library organizations” that they are all totally corrupted. All you have to do is accept that premise just for a second and you will realize that it causes all the contradictions to explain themselves. And all the corruption originates in the local/state library level, the government funding of libraries. When there is a trough of government spending guaranteed, of course the scoundrels come out to feast, amidst a barrage of emotionally manipulative arguments narratives, usually centered around helping children. Reality is that the whole library sector is an industry and it’s extremely corrupt, but that’s how the directors and executives like it, as they get rich from those public funds people are forced to pay against their will… for the children, of course.
  - jgerrish 9mo ago
    Indian River State College in Port St. Lucie and Fort Pierce, Florida is an OCLC member. Their kids section is always busy. They provide more than just books to patrons, one of their projects provides rentable backpacks with food making kits: (Sorry about the Facebook link) https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=789082493879103&vanity=IRSCLibraries https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=789082493879103&vanity=IRS... Cooking together provides an educational and bonding opportunity for kids and caretakers, and nutrition is important. Making it easier is a win to me. We can be annoyed at the actions against Anna's and also celebrate OCLC members and physical libraries. I appreciate I'm just replying to a off-hand comment, so I'm sorry for the next part. I will be battling my family for decades about IP and how they are relying on it instead of first mover advantage and the IQ we had today and yesterday. And how it changes cultural values around sharing. It's not good. I know we probably agree on that, so that part isn't directed at you, just the future.
    - mmooss 9mo ago
      Thank you for sharing your direct experience, which is always valuable. > We can be annoyed at the actions against Anna's and also celebrate OCLC members and physical libraries. I didn't mean to say otherwise. And I think 'annoyed' is insufficient for anyone who can influence OCLC. Too much is at stake to be bystanders. Free and unlimited distribution doesn't need to be the answer, but look what happened to the Internet Archive's lending library, for example. There are other solutions too, such as micropayments. Shutting down online access to books is immoral and damaging to society, the economy, and the people of the world.
- ls612 9mo ago
  They also wasted a ton of money suing a random Washington state woman who wasn’t even affiliated with AA this whole case has really been a shitshow especially considering from a purely legal perspective the publishers have a point. I almost feel like every rightsholder other than Nintendo wants to engage in performative legal action more than substantive legal actions.
superkuh 9mo ago
Cory Doctorow has it right. Since the USA is applying tariffs to everyone everywhere anyway, everyone should abandon their US free trade agreements and get rid of the agreement required local laws that allow US companies to shut down others for felony violation of business model.
- CamperBob2 9mo ago
  Indeed, we in the US are about to find out what it means to voluntarily give up every bit of soft power we wielded in the post-WWII international order.
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
  > everyone should abandon their US free trade agreements Do you have a link to Doctorow's argument? On its face, this is incredibly stupid--for most economies, the cost of losing a FTA is well above any of the tariff levels being discussed.
  - dustyharddrive 9mo ago
    https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification-resistant-internet https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification...
    - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
      Thank you. Is there a transcript? I'm specifically interested in whether he's making an actual argument around trade, or if he's speaking metaphorically.
      - alephnerd 9mo ago
        Transcript - https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/ https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/ He's serious in a techno-accelerationist manner, specifically around anticircumvention laws. That said, knowing the strength of the MT in TMT within the EU, it's more of an idealistic dream than a reality.
greyface- 9mo ago
Judgment: https://torrentfreak.com/images/anna-oclc-default-judgment.pdf https://torrentfreak.com/images/anna-oclc-default-judgment.p... Disappointing in particular to see the court validate a ToS "browsewrap agreement", admitting that OCLC provided no evidence that Anna's Archive was aware of the agreement, but still finding the fact that "Defendant is a sophisticated party that scraped data from Plaintiffs website daily" as sufficient to bind them to it.
- shakna 9mo ago
  Can that be used as precedent to bind the AI companies that see themselves getting blocked, and then just switch to residential IPs?
  - perihelions 9mo ago
    > "used as precedent" It's only a default judgement (Anna's Archive was a no-show in court), so I'd assume not. Since there were no lawyers arguing the defense side, the judge would have more or less rubber-stamped everything the plaintiff argued, without careful analysis.
Frotag 9mo ago
> Specifically, the site’s operator and these third parties are prohibited from scraping WorldCat data, storing or distributing the data on Anna’s Archive websites, and encouraging others to store, use or share this data. Given the timing, I assumed it was Spotify trying to prevent the release of their dataset but apparently not.
- kelipso 9mo ago
  I wonder if spotify cares about it that much. I looked at the article and it says the archive is 160kbps files and 96kbps files, while spotify can stream 320kbps files and recently lossless audio files, and of course there’s the app itself.
  - Frotag 9mo ago
    They deprecated their audio features endpoint which provided metrics like "danceability". Their ToS also forbids building recommendation engines with that data. So I imagine they're a little protective of at least that section of the metadata dump. But yeah I agree that the audio file itself probably isn't super important to keep secret. After all, it's not that hard to find cd rips or at worst, a youtube version to download.
  - s1mplicissimus 9mo ago
    I have a personal experience of spotify-users not being the most audiophile audience, to put it mildly. Probably spotify knows that
    - expedition32 9mo ago
      Spotify ended the golden age of music piracy.
      - deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
      - t-3 9mo ago
charcircuit 9mo ago
How does it take more than 24 hours to take these servers down when they obviously are violating copyright. It should only take a few phone calls to get them taken down.
- fragmede 9mo ago
  Who do you call? The Internet police? Anna's Archive is hosted in countries that don't give a shit about US copyright laws. Pirate bay is back up, and they've been at it for decades.
  - charcircuit 9mo ago
    The traffic is getting here via another country who has signed a copyright treaty with the US. Just follow the packets.
    - octoberfranklin 9mo ago
      If you block the packets, people will just use a VPN. The best you can hope for is something like the Great Firewall, which only works on normies.
      - prussia 9mo ago
        Sure, ultimately technical/knowledgeable people will be able to get around it. But preventing normies from accessing Anna's Archive is what they care about, because most people are normies.
        deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
        octoberfranklin 9mo ago
        preventing normies from accessing Anna's Archive is what they care about Seriously? Anna's Archive hosts ebooks and scholarly journal articles. Not the kind of stuff your average Instagram Influencer (TM) is into. I'd be utterly shocked if more than 1% of the population had ever used Anna's Archive. This isn't like Hollywood movie torrenting sites or IPTV sports streaming piracy. It's a long way from mainstream.
dartharva 9mo ago
I don't understand why Anna's Archive has such a convoluted donation system. At first glance it looks like it's trying to push a subscription on you, which is ironic considering aversion to subscriptions is exactly what's driving people to AA in the first place. I found no convenient single-link crypto donate button where I could just send some money whenever I want.
- simoncion 9mo ago
  > I don't understand why Anna's Archive has such a convoluted donation system. What? It's one page with a bunch of very clear options. > At first glance it looks like it's trying to push a subscription on you... On the one hand, fair. On the other hand, this is prominently displayed on the donation page: Be aware that while the memberships on this page are “per month”, they are one-time donations (non-recurring). See the Donation FAQ. Additionally, Q&A #1 on the Donations FAQ page are: Do memberships automatically renew? Memberships do not automatically renew. You can join for as long or short as you want. Even if we're too busy to read, we can think about how they would manage to set up a recurring cryptocurrency payment without possession of one's wallet keys and become enlightened. > I found no convenient single-link crypto donate button where I could just send some money whenever I want. From their Donation FAQ: Can I make a donation without becoming a member? Sure thing. We accept donations of any amount on this Monero (XMR) address: 88gS7a8aHj5EYhCfYnkhEmYXX3MtR35r3YhWdWXwGLyS4fkXYjkupcif6RY5oj9xkNR8VVmoRXh1kQKQrZBRRc8PHLWMgUR.
  - toraway 9mo ago
    Yeah, what OP is bizarrely describing as "push a subscription" with a (completely false) "im 12 and this is deep" insight about Anna Archive becoming the very thing they swore to destroy, can accurately be explained as them trying to ensure you get the benefits entitled by your donation level via your access key (linked to zero personal information). I donate in 3 or 6 months chunks typically, if I forget, I don't get hassled to resubscribe or anything (nor could they even contact me for any reason), I just lose those bonus download benefits until I do it again. I could also generate a new key each time but it's convenient keeping the same one in my password manager so I like the way they do it now, basically works just like LWN.net.
mmooss 9mo ago
> Specifically, the site’s operator and these third parties are prohibited from scraping WorldCat data, storing or distributing the data on Anna’s Archive websites, and encouraging others to store, use or share this data. I don't see how that impacts anyone but Anna's Archive. Arguably ISPs distribute the data, but how are registrars implicated?
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
notepad0x90 9mo ago
Given how LLMs are trained on its data, it's travesty to prevent the public from accessing it all the same. I'm thinking it should be distributed using physical media given it's size. A 20 volume encyclopedia on hard drives? We used to do this when the internet was too slow back in the day. I've had friends give me anything from pirated encyclopedias to MSDN docs on CDs. if enough people have enough of the volumes, they could seed and keep it going. But if only a handful of people have the actual data, it's a matter of time before it's taken offline for good.
- ottah 9mo ago
  It's petabytes of data. Think cargo pallot, or small pickup truck bed.
  - notepad0x90 9mo ago
    400TB~ last i recall?
  - fao_ 9mo ago
    imagine if there was a global distribution of local buildings you could go to to look at and obtain copies of books... hmmmmm...
- wakawaka28 9mo ago
  If you want to have the whole thing, it'd probably take dozens of hard drives each of which needs several hours to copy. For scale, individual chunks of the archive are several gigabytes, and there are thousands of chunks. It's not like that torrent with 1000 books you got in the day. There are millions of books and god knows what else in the archive.
  - notepad0x90 9mo ago
    There are 12-20TB drives now.
    - wakawaka28 9mo ago
expedition32 9mo ago
I use it to grab fairly obscure history books- which are mostly funded by foundations, universities and governments anyway. That is the kind of piracy that goes under the radar.

126 points by t-3 9mo ago

God knows how much OCLC spent in legal fees just to get it this far, even without any motions by the other party. What's the point? None of the people using Anna's Archive are potential customers of OCLC. Just lawyers trying to justify their existence.

kingleopold 9mo ago
come one, we need lawyers so they can help owners make extra $billions. some lawyers are not humans, they are objects bought with money.literally, no humanity in them.
mmooss 9mo ago
Also, isn't OCLC focused on the mission of libraries, which is to distribute knowledge? What is their attitude toward services like Anna's, which accomplishes that mission much better than any OCLC member?
- rf15 9mo ago
  because The Mission is making money, too.
  - skywal_l 9mo ago
    Exactly, Pournelle's law in full force.
    - nsmdkdfk 9mo ago
      [dead]
- RobotToaster 9mo ago
  These so called charities have to justify their executives' seven figure salaries somehow. If someone is doing their job better without all the embezzling executives people may start asking inconvenient questions.
  - rahimnathwani 9mo ago
    The CEO's compensation in 2024 was $1.3 million.
    - RobotToaster 9mo ago
      That is seven figures, no?
- hopelite 9mo ago
  The fact that such an organization is focused on the inverse of the mission one would expect should tell people more than enough. Unfortunately, most people simply rely on their preconceived notions about most things, even when faced with a stark contrast in reality. I can tell you from direct contact with many of these “library organizations” that they are all totally corrupted. All you have to do is accept that premise just for a second and you will realize that it causes all the contradictions to explain themselves. And all the corruption originates in the local/state library level, the government funding of libraries. When there is a trough of government spending guaranteed, of course the scoundrels come out to feast, amidst a barrage of emotionally manipulative arguments narratives, usually centered around helping children. Reality is that the whole library sector is an industry and it’s extremely corrupt, but that’s how the directors and executives like it, as they get rich from those public funds people are forced to pay against their will… for the children, of course.
- jgerrish 9mo ago
  Indian River State College in Port St. Lucie and Fort Pierce, Florida is an OCLC member. Their kids section is always busy. They provide more than just books to patrons, one of their projects provides rentable backpacks with food making kits: (Sorry about the Facebook link) https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=789082493879103&vanity=IRSCLibraries https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=789082493879103&vanity=IRS... Cooking together provides an educational and bonding opportunity for kids and caretakers, and nutrition is important. Making it easier is a win to me. We can be annoyed at the actions against Anna's and also celebrate OCLC members and physical libraries. I appreciate I'm just replying to a off-hand comment, so I'm sorry for the next part. I will be battling my family for decades about IP and how they are relying on it instead of first mover advantage and the IQ we had today and yesterday. And how it changes cultural values around sharing. It's not good. I know we probably agree on that, so that part isn't directed at you, just the future.
  - mmooss 9mo ago
    Thank you for sharing your direct experience, which is always valuable. > We can be annoyed at the actions against Anna's and also celebrate OCLC members and physical libraries. I didn't mean to say otherwise. And I think 'annoyed' is insufficient for anyone who can influence OCLC. Too much is at stake to be bystanders. Free and unlimited distribution doesn't need to be the answer, but look what happened to the Internet Archive's lending library, for example. There are other solutions too, such as micropayments. Shutting down online access to books is immoral and damaging to society, the economy, and the people of the world.
ls612 9mo ago
They also wasted a ton of money suing a random Washington state woman who wasn’t even affiliated with AA this whole case has really been a shitshow especially considering from a purely legal perspective the publishers have a point. I almost feel like every rightsholder other than Nintendo wants to engage in performative legal action more than substantive legal actions.

superkuh 9mo ago

Cory Doctorow has it right. Since the USA is applying tariffs to everyone everywhere anyway, everyone should abandon their US free trade agreements and get rid of the agreement required local laws that allow US companies to shut down others for felony violation of business model.

CamperBob2 9mo ago
Indeed, we in the US are about to find out what it means to voluntarily give up every bit of soft power we wielded in the post-WWII international order.
JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
> everyone should abandon their US free trade agreements Do you have a link to Doctorow's argument? On its face, this is incredibly stupid--for most economies, the cost of losing a FTA is well above any of the tariff levels being discussed.
- dustyharddrive 9mo ago
  https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification-resistant-internet https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification...
  - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
    Thank you. Is there a transcript? I'm specifically interested in whether he's making an actual argument around trade, or if he's speaking metaphorically.
    - alephnerd 9mo ago
      Transcript - https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/ https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/ He's serious in a techno-accelerationist manner, specifically around anticircumvention laws. That said, knowing the strength of the MT in TMT within the EU, it's more of an idealistic dream than a reality.

greyface- 9mo ago

Judgment: https://torrentfreak.com/images/anna-oclc-default-judgment.pdf https://torrentfreak.com/images/anna-oclc-default-judgment.p... Disappointing in particular to see the court validate a ToS "browsewrap agreement", admitting that OCLC provided no evidence that Anna's Archive was aware of the agreement, but still finding the fact that "Defendant is a sophisticated party that scraped data from Plaintiffs website daily" as sufficient to bind them to it.

shakna 9mo ago
Can that be used as precedent to bind the AI companies that see themselves getting blocked, and then just switch to residential IPs?
- perihelions 9mo ago
  > "used as precedent" It's only a default judgement (Anna's Archive was a no-show in court), so I'd assume not. Since there were no lawyers arguing the defense side, the judge would have more or less rubber-stamped everything the plaintiff argued, without careful analysis.

Frotag 9mo ago

> Specifically, the site’s operator and these third parties are prohibited from scraping WorldCat data, storing or distributing the data on Anna’s Archive websites, and encouraging others to store, use or share this data. Given the timing, I assumed it was Spotify trying to prevent the release of their dataset but apparently not.

kelipso 9mo ago
I wonder if spotify cares about it that much. I looked at the article and it says the archive is 160kbps files and 96kbps files, while spotify can stream 320kbps files and recently lossless audio files, and of course there’s the app itself.
- Frotag 9mo ago
  They deprecated their audio features endpoint which provided metrics like "danceability". Their ToS also forbids building recommendation engines with that data. So I imagine they're a little protective of at least that section of the metadata dump. But yeah I agree that the audio file itself probably isn't super important to keep secret. After all, it's not that hard to find cd rips or at worst, a youtube version to download.
- s1mplicissimus 9mo ago
  I have a personal experience of spotify-users not being the most audiophile audience, to put it mildly. Probably spotify knows that
  - expedition32 9mo ago
    Spotify ended the golden age of music piracy.
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    - t-3 9mo ago

charcircuit 9mo ago

How does it take more than 24 hours to take these servers down when they obviously are violating copyright. It should only take a few phone calls to get them taken down.

fragmede 9mo ago
Who do you call? The Internet police? Anna's Archive is hosted in countries that don't give a shit about US copyright laws. Pirate bay is back up, and they've been at it for decades.
- charcircuit 9mo ago
  The traffic is getting here via another country who has signed a copyright treaty with the US. Just follow the packets.
  - octoberfranklin 9mo ago
    If you block the packets, people will just use a VPN. The best you can hope for is something like the Great Firewall, which only works on normies.
    - prussia 9mo ago
      Sure, ultimately technical/knowledgeable people will be able to get around it. But preventing normies from accessing Anna's Archive is what they care about, because most people are normies.
      - deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
      - octoberfranklin 9mo ago
        preventing normies from accessing Anna's Archive is what they care about Seriously? Anna's Archive hosts ebooks and scholarly journal articles. Not the kind of stuff your average Instagram Influencer (TM) is into. I'd be utterly shocked if more than 1% of the population had ever used Anna's Archive. This isn't like Hollywood movie torrenting sites or IPTV sports streaming piracy. It's a long way from mainstream.

dartharva 9mo ago

I don't understand why Anna's Archive has such a convoluted donation system. At first glance it looks like it's trying to push a subscription on you, which is ironic considering aversion to subscriptions is exactly what's driving people to AA in the first place. I found no convenient single-link crypto donate button where I could just send some money whenever I want.

simoncion 9mo ago
> I don't understand why Anna's Archive has such a convoluted donation system. What? It's one page with a bunch of very clear options. > At first glance it looks like it's trying to push a subscription on you... On the one hand, fair. On the other hand, this is prominently displayed on the donation page: Be aware that while the memberships on this page are “per month”, they are one-time donations (non-recurring). See the Donation FAQ. Additionally, Q&A #1 on the Donations FAQ page are: Do memberships automatically renew? Memberships do not automatically renew. You can join for as long or short as you want. Even if we're too busy to read, we can think about how they would manage to set up a recurring cryptocurrency payment without possession of one's wallet keys and become enlightened. > I found no convenient single-link crypto donate button where I could just send some money whenever I want. From their Donation FAQ: Can I make a donation without becoming a member? Sure thing. We accept donations of any amount on this Monero (XMR) address: 88gS7a8aHj5EYhCfYnkhEmYXX3MtR35r3YhWdWXwGLyS4fkXYjkupcif6RY5oj9xkNR8VVmoRXh1kQKQrZBRRc8PHLWMgUR.
- toraway 9mo ago
  Yeah, what OP is bizarrely describing as "push a subscription" with a (completely false) "im 12 and this is deep" insight about Anna Archive becoming the very thing they swore to destroy, can accurately be explained as them trying to ensure you get the benefits entitled by your donation level via your access key (linked to zero personal information). I donate in 3 or 6 months chunks typically, if I forget, I don't get hassled to resubscribe or anything (nor could they even contact me for any reason), I just lose those bonus download benefits until I do it again. I could also generate a new key each time but it's convenient keeping the same one in my password manager so I like the way they do it now, basically works just like LWN.net.

mmooss 9mo ago

> Specifically, the site’s operator and these third parties are prohibited from scraping WorldCat data, storing or distributing the data on Anna’s Archive websites, and encouraging others to store, use or share this data. I don't see how that impacts anyone but Anna's Archive. Arguably ISPs distribute the data, but how are registrars implicated?

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

notepad0x90 9mo ago

Given how LLMs are trained on its data, it's travesty to prevent the public from accessing it all the same. I'm thinking it should be distributed using physical media given it's size. A 20 volume encyclopedia on hard drives? We used to do this when the internet was too slow back in the day. I've had friends give me anything from pirated encyclopedias to MSDN docs on CDs. if enough people have enough of the volumes, they could seed and keep it going. But if only a handful of people have the actual data, it's a matter of time before it's taken offline for good.

ottah 9mo ago
It's petabytes of data. Think cargo pallot, or small pickup truck bed.
- notepad0x90 9mo ago
  400TB~ last i recall?
- fao_ 9mo ago
  imagine if there was a global distribution of local buildings you could go to to look at and obtain copies of books... hmmmmm...
wakawaka28 9mo ago
If you want to have the whole thing, it'd probably take dozens of hard drives each of which needs several hours to copy. For scale, individual chunks of the archive are several gigabytes, and there are thousands of chunks. It's not like that torrent with 1000 books you got in the day. There are millions of books and god knows what else in the archive.
- notepad0x90 9mo ago
  There are 12-20TB drives now.
  - wakawaka28 9mo ago

expedition32 9mo ago

I use it to grab fairly obscure history books- which are mostly funded by foundations, universities and governments anyway. That is the kind of piracy that goes under the radar.