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Anna's Archive Owes $340 Million, Lost Several Domains, but It's Still Online
- Synaesthesia 2mo agoIncredible website. Really one of the dreams of the internet realised, the ability to access all knowledge at your fingertips.
- simlevesque 2mo agoI was blown away when I paid to get an API key for it. The process is intricate and state of the art.
- linksbro 2mo agoWhat's the process like? I wasn't aware there was a paid API key.
- simlevesque 2mo agoYou buy an Amazon gift card as a gift and use the email Anna's Archive provide you as the recipient. The email is unique to you so they know when you paid them.
- treszkai 2mo agoHow on earth are they able to cash in on that? Surely they are not ordering neither air fryers nor their servers from Amazon.. Or anything for that matter, given the illegality of AA. Do they resell them at 90% on eBay?
- Yokolos 2mo agoProbably the greatest achievement of modern society, a rebirth of the Library of Alexandria. Of course, only private for-business corporations are allowed to steal the world's knowledge, apparently, and only to be able to monetise it. There's something deeply wrong with our civilization that Anna's Archive is punished while companies like OpenAI, Google, Amazon, Anthropic, etc are just ... ignored when they do things like destructively digitise books or pirate things.
- T3RMINATED 2mo ago[dead]
- nekusar 2mo agoMight as well say "Annas Archive OWES ELEVENTY HUNDRED BILLIONTY-TRILLIONTY INFINITY DOLLARS!!!!!111" ala elementary school playground make-believe. I remember when RIAA was shaking down 15 year olds for $7000 for a single Metallica download from Napster. Or how Aaron Schwartz was executed by proxy by JSTOR and the feds, for what should have been free to access for all. But hey, Anthropic, OpenAI, X, and others can pirate to their hearts content with for-profit piracy, but "we" (royal) are OK with that. We just cant have the poors have access to the sum of human knowledge.
- palmotea 2mo ago[flagged]
- nekusar 2mo ago"We are going to jail you for half or more of your life, restrict any medicines you might be on, treat you in deplorable conditions, constitute you as a slave of the state if we decide so". And there is no parole in federal prisons. Feds did NOT have to choose to go the route they did. Their pursuance of a victimless "crime" lead to Aaron's only path was 'Exit'. Sure, he committed suicide. Why? Because his life was already significantly threatened with what amounts to torture by prison.
- tokai 2mo agoThe feds are not JSTOR now are they? Your discourse is disgusting and only weakens the cause.
- KennyBlanken 2mo agoI started typing out something but they're foaming at the mouth and wildly ignorant about nearly everything ranging from the basics of how the US criminal trial system works, PACER fee policies, the fact that prosecutors spent a year negotiating with Schwartz over a plea deal with a final offer of 6 months...a deal he refused against the advice of friends, family, his partner, Any time someone starts shrieking "half his life" you can assume they don't know a single factual thing about the case. From the tone, ignorance, drama, and attitude I'm guessing they're about 22 years old.
- puppycodes 2mo agoAnna's Archive is a gift to humanity
- nekusar 2mo agoExactly. All libraries are worthy of being supported and grown. I make no distinction between a physical dead-tree library and a digital library. The only reason we even have dead-tree libraries at all is because 100 years ago, that was what John Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie put forth to whitewash their horrible capitalist behaviors across the USA. And because it was done by those generations' billionaires, public libraries because acceptable. If public libraries were created in the last 20 years, they would have been banned and felony copyright charges would have been levied. In fact, thats exactly what happened WHEN people tried to create free digital libraries.
- MYEUHD 2mo ago> If public libraries were created in the last 20 years, they would have been banned and felony copyright charges would have been levied. In fact, thats exactly what happened WHEN people tried to create free digital libraries. I wonder why nobody created a Netflix-like subscription for digital books
- Ekaros 2mo agoAmazon maybe? Kindle Unlimited. In some ways Audible with audiobooks. Which actually has lot of entrants though they tend to limit listening time on large part of their portfolio.
- copper4eva 2mo agoI believe you can get access to a lot of digital books with a library card online. Not something I have personally done, so can't really give details.
- arrosenberg 2mo agoLibby very much exists, you just need to sign up through your local library.
- surgical_fire 2mo agoReminder for me to make another donation. Piracy is morally justified at this point.
- voakbasda 2mo agoI wonder by if the US considers this “supporting a terrorist organization”.
- no_input 2mo agoDon't give the government any ideas
- voakbasda 2mo agoHardly a new idea: Trumplestiltskin suggested during this term that we should start detaining Americans who expressed their dissent against the government.
- walrus01 2mo agoDonate a significant amount of money, and you can get a free trip to the new gulag in El Salvador. Or maybe gitmo.
- toomuchtodo 2mo agoUS probably considers anything impairing profits, stock prices, or enterprise value terrorist activity at this point.
- surgical_fire 2mo agoMaybe. Thankfully I don't live in the US, and likely won't set foot there ever again.
- drstewart 2mo ago[flagged]
- cloudie78 2mo agoSo when are Nvidia, Facebook, and everyone else going to chip in and pay up?
- outside1234 2mo agoDid you miss that they are huge corporations that the law doesn't apply to?
- kingleopold 2mo agoif this is true. what does this say about "rule of law"? is it all fiction?
- nemomarx 2mo agoLike all things with society, it exists so long as we constantly create it. If you slack off many things will vanish faster than you think.
- gruez 2mo agoYou mean how anthropic lost a court case and now they're being made to pay?
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- kingleopold 2mo agothey are paying from the revenue, they gained ton of valuation and revenue because of books? if you do that, you lose most of your life
- gruez 2mo agoEven in the infamous Aaron Swartz case he was offered 6 months in prison as a plea bargain. Even ignoring the difference in crime (torrenting vs CFAA), no one was going to "lose most of your life".
- iLoveOncall 2mo agoI really don't understand why HackerNews gets hard for Anna's Archive but you never see other illegal download websites praised here. They're not more or less virtuous than any others, they're in it for the money and you're a fool if you think otherwise. I'm not against piracy, it's great, but to claim they are moral saints is a joke. Anyway, bring in the downvotes as I know will happen.
- the_real_cher 2mo agoAs a hacker News viewer I'm for other illegal download sites as well. If you just Google 'free media heck yeah' you'll see a great deal of them!
- iLoveOncall 2mo agoYeah me too, but I don't claim that they're a moral good.
- goolz 2mo agoThey provide the world with an invaluable service at the expense of their freedom. Seems incredibly noble and good to me. Especially considering the current climate.
- iLoveOncall 2mo agoThey're a for profit organization and you're falling for their propaganda.
- branon 2mo agoPropaganda to what end? Are you referring to anything in particular? Is your angle merely that shadow library hosts should be operating their services entirely for free (to the point of refusing payment) or is there something we're missing here?
- dcchambers 2mo ago"If you own someone $340, that's your problem. If you owe someone $340,000,000, that's there problem." Might as well be a trillion dollars as it's never getting paid.
- qwertox 2mo ago"when you're $100,000 in debt, it's your problem. But when you're $1 million in debt, it's the bank's" - Rosalie Goes Shopping (1989)
- a4isms 2mo agoAn old variation: Fred and Wilhelmina are in bed together. Fred tosses and turns, unable to sleep. "Fred, what's troubling you?" "You know Bjarne from the bank? Well, a balloon payment is due tomorrow on my loan, and I don't have the cash flow to pay it." Wilhelmina thinks for a bit, then reaches for her phone. "Betty? Yes, this is Wilhelmina. Sorry to call so late. Would you tell Bjarne that Fred can't make the loan payment tomorrow? Yes, that's all. Good night." Fred states at Wilhelmina, aghast. "What did you do THAT for?" She smiles. "Now it's Bjarne's problem. Let him toss and turn, you can go to sleep."
- ivberrOg 2mo agothe flintstones?
- a4isms 2mo agoI chose the names from The Flintstones, although the joke is not from the show. Ridiculously unimportant trivia: The Flintstones borrows heavily from The Honeymooners, was the first animated sitcom, and was also the first animated show aired in prime-time.
- Frieren 2mo agoAnna's Archive is what TV told me in the 2000s that the future was. An online database with all published books one click away. Far from the dystopian reality than the corporate internet has become.
- num42 2mo agoLong live Anna’s Archive. I stand on the shoulders of the Internet, Wikipedia, Anna’s Archive, Z-Library, LibGen, YouTube, Hacker News, Reddit, and Sci-Hub. I deeply admire the people who are obsessed with their passions and strive to build things that will lay the foundations for others.
- sam_lowry_ 2mo agoWhy don't Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Facebook & Co defend Anna's Archive publicly? Coming out would be a bold move for them.
- toomuchtodo 2mo agoNo gain, all liability. Easier to cut them a check for access to training data and say nothing. Unless legal discovery was performed, the outside world would never know, and the payment records would roll off corporate records through a record retention schedule eventually. Could obfuscate it as a contractor consulting fee ("knowledge management subject matter expert") if you wanted to get tricky, depending on the risk appetite of whomever would receive the funds. (not legal advice!)
- p-e-w 2mo agoThere’s zero liability in a company stating publicly that they support Anna’s Archive. Zero. Free speech protections cover much more egregious statements than that.
- toomuchtodo 2mo agoI disagree. Anyone with even a hint of standing will sue, and keep suing. As someone who has to work with corporate counsel often, do not say anything you don't have to say. Only say what is absolutely necessary. Free speech protects you from your government. It does not shield you from civil suits, and the US is extremely litigious.
- criddell 2mo ago
- NooneAtAll3 2mo ago"owes" seems like a wrong word here
- sajithdilshan 2mo agoUnfortunately it’s blocked in Germany
- throwatdem12311 2mo agoDidn’t they have a default judgment against them because they didn’t show up to court? Do they even know who runs it? They railroaded Aaron Swartz (which eventually lead to his suicide) for much, much less. One side wants to freely share knowledge with all of humanity, the other wants to restrict it to make a buck. I know who I support.
- shaky-carrousel 2mo agoAnd Google owes 20 decillion dollars to the Russian government. Who cares either way.
- tokai 2mo agoJust wished they didn't sell bulk access for LLM training.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- srean 2mo agoI only wish they allowed browsing journals by year and volume. Libgen allowed that but war in Ukraine broken libgen. It lives but as a much shadier alter egos that does not support all that original libgen supported.
- expedition32 2mo agoThanks for reminding me I need to download some books for the holidays!
- theideaofcoffee 2mo agoJust make them owe $134 Trillion or whatever the evaluation was years ago suggested by the RIAA for their estimation of 'damages' for music piracy. It's about as meaningful.
- cyanydeez 2mo agoit "Owes" just like Anthropic and OpenAI "Own" their models trained on the worlds collective IP.
- coolThingsFirst 2mo agotaking shots against the King? better not miss!
- profstasiak 2mo agoRembember to seed torrent kids
- gitowiec 2mo agoWhat are current domains? I tried the ones from article but got redirected to spam
- barnabee 2mo ago.gd works for me
- wlonkly 2mo agoWikipedia usually has the most recent domains for sites like this. There's even a browser extension[1] that uses an `.idk` TLD to say "Look up the latest URL from this site's Wikipedia article". [1] https://github.com/aaronjanse/dns-over-wikipedia https://github.com/aaronjanse/dns-over-wikipedia
- dopple 2mo agoI made a service specifically to translate Wikipedia entries to DNS with Anna's Archive as the main use case: https://whither.link/ https://whither.link/
- mkbkn 2mo ago.gl works for me.
- plusfour 2mo ago"owes"
- asdefghyk 2mo agowhen I read title . "Annas archive owes $340 million absolutely first thing that came to mind is " How much do all these Ai companies owe for their unauthorised use of books and other media?"
- asdefghyk 2mo agoI wonder what would happen if Annas archive announced In response to the 340M fine, .... "We have set up a LLM and are deleting all our books ? "
- dominick-cc 2mo agoI don't understand why there is so much love for Anna's archive here. I feel like I'm getting whiplash because there is so much hate for AI companies training and profiting off of the worlds knowledge without licensing it. And yet, a site that directly facilitates that by taking payments from AI companies is lauded as this amazing and honorable thing. Can someone help me understand what im missing? In general I don't have many qualms with modern piracy, it just seems very hypocritical and I'm confused.
- pibaker 2mo agoAI companies turn public data into closed commercial products. They are allowed to profit off your copyrighted data, but only they get to profit from their own models. I'd imagine the backlash to AI companies from us white collar workers to be less severe if they have to publish their weights. In fact if you look closer you will see HN is actually pretty content with Chinese open models. It's the American AI corps with closed models that attract criticism.
- keeda 2mo ago> Can someone help me understand what im missing? One directly threatens the livelihoods of the commenters here, the other doesn't ;-)
- frgturpwd 2mo agoI don't hate either particularly, but I care more about getting any book I want whenever, wherever, than I care about some abstract far away moralizing of something of consequence to me only ambiguously.
- AdhemarVandamme 2mo agoObviously, not everyone on Hacker News shares the same opinion. But, in general, Stewart Brand’s sentiment — expressed during a panel discussion at the first Hackers’ Conference in 1984, when he said that “information wants to be free” — is broadly shared here. His full quote was: “On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable… On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time.” Steve Wozniak famously responded: “Information should be free, but your time should not.” Even among those on HN who believe that copyright serves a societal purpose, many still want copyright terms to be drastically shortened (back). So I’m skeptical that the hostility toward AI companies is primarily based on their training on, and profiting from, the world’s knowledge without licensing it. I suspect it is rather based on their doing so without making that knowledge accessible in return. In the recent news of their destroying books, it even means reducing the chance that that knowledge will ever become open. Yes, opening the world’s knowledge can lead to good and bad uses — just like free software can be used for great as well as for nefarious purposes. We’re generally too techno-optimistic to judge technology solely by its worst possible outcomes. But for such a benevolent view to be justified, the potential benefits need to be also clear.
- nojvek 2mo ago> U.S. courts can’t reach domains registered beyond their jurisdiction. That’s likely to increase calls for site-blocking legislation, a measure the industry has long favored and that remains high on the political agenda in the United States. Eventually US will have its own great firewall like China. Politics is about powergrab and what we’ve seen is more and more power grab. It’s likely the billionaires are able to buy the govt goons to pass the laws that allow them to be the gatekeepers. Anthropic, OpenAI and the model builders massively benefited from the archived information. Distill entirety of archived human knowledge.
- crimsdings 2mo agoHave they released the Spotify scrape already?
- bobbruno 2mo agoMaybe the US companies could solve their legal boundary problems by taking their issues to the International Court of Justice... /s
- k310 2mo agoMy experience is that many of the books at Anna's Archive were scanned at the Internet Archive, using some compromise exposure setting that renders halftones decently, but puts text on a dingy gray background.
- Anamon 1mo agoInternet Archive provides their scans in various formats and AA seems to mostly archive a very poor one. I think what you're describing is the result of a post-processing step for one of the space-saving derivatives. It's worth looking up the book on the IA and see how it looks there. Very often, I found that it looks excellent on IA, but terrible, borderline unreadable, in the AA copy. The difference is also obvious in the file size. Generally I found the quality of the original scans of books scanned by the IA to be excellent.
- treszkai 2mo agoIt sounds like AA scraping Spotify was an unnecessarily risky move in terms of legal consequences and the toes they step on (who might be behind the downtimes). And it's not even fully in line with their aim of cataloging all the books in existence: while music could be argued is "information", one's sense of IP is much stronger with pirated music than with pirated books.