The people running Anna’s Archive should’ve really known better. At one hand, I’m appreciative for what they attempted to do. But on the other hand, they’ve really painted a big target on their backs by scraping on Spotify. Now they have the RIAA legion sickened on them and they’re probably now going to get nuked by lawsuits and appeals. So, in a sense, Anna’s Archive kinda went and blew themselves up, screwing people out of a good source.
That’s honestly how piracy in general should be. But as we’ve learned, have learned and seemingly continue to learn. That, the reason a number of great piracy sources go down the way they did was because, someone had a very big mouth and drew attention that ended up costing us great sources that had lasted a good long while.
These days, it’s get your pirating in as much as you can, take your loot and provide only to those who know how and when to shut up.
Piracy (and Anna’s Archive)'s mission is to share information, especially culture, with everyone, regardless of their ability to pay for it and regardless of the geoblocks. Keeping the service hidden may benefit you and the few people that know about it, but it isn’t the purpose of these sites. They felt they were protected enough, and they decided to take another step towards their objective, that’s it.
In practice, nothing’s gonna happen. They already have 4 different domains. Even if they managed to seize the servers and cancel every domain, all of Anna’s Archive data is out there on public torrents, and their software is also FOSS. Anyone can make a mirror.
There’s an Ars Technica article published yesterday or the day before about the book metadata scraping, and a representative for AA came right out and said they deliberately violate copyright law in most countries.
They believe, apparently, that collecting information is more valuable than being legal. In that case, they were ordered by a court to delete the data they scraped and they were not expected to comply (and have not done so). The .org suspension was thought to be related to that. Apparently it is not.
Yeah like it’s fine if you’re Meta (Facebook) and you pirate books to train AI, but if you say it’s for human knowledge, so that a poor person in a third world country who might pull in $100 a month can still have access to books and music… they figure it’s worth it if a bunch of spoiled Americans can also get it for free, as long as they seed.
The people running Anna’s Archive should’ve really known better. At one hand, I’m appreciative for what they attempted to do. But on the other hand, they’ve really painted a big target on their backs by scraping on Spotify. Now they have the RIAA legion sickened on them and they’re probably now going to get nuked by lawsuits and appeals. So, in a sense, Anna’s Archive kinda went and blew themselves up, screwing people out of a good source.
They should have stayed secret so only you, my friend’s neighbour’s 2nd cousin, once removed, and I knew about them.
That’s honestly how piracy in general should be. But as we’ve learned, have learned and seemingly continue to learn. That, the reason a number of great piracy sources go down the way they did was because, someone had a very big mouth and drew attention that ended up costing us great sources that had lasted a good long while.
These days, it’s get your pirating in as much as you can, take your loot and provide only to those who know how and when to shut up.
Piracy (and Anna’s Archive)'s mission is to share information, especially culture, with everyone, regardless of their ability to pay for it and regardless of the geoblocks. Keeping the service hidden may benefit you and the few people that know about it, but it isn’t the purpose of these sites. They felt they were protected enough, and they decided to take another step towards their objective, that’s it.
In practice, nothing’s gonna happen. They already have 4 different domains. Even if they managed to seize the servers and cancel every domain, all of Anna’s Archive data is out there on public torrents, and their software is also FOSS. Anyone can make a mirror.
I don’t think you can run a service like that if you are afraid of copyright lawsuits.
How is Anna’s Archive legal to begin with?
It isn’t.
There’s an Ars Technica article published yesterday or the day before about the book metadata scraping, and a representative for AA came right out and said they deliberately violate copyright law in most countries.
They believe, apparently, that collecting information is more valuable than being legal. In that case, they were ordered by a court to delete the data they scraped and they were not expected to comply (and have not done so). The .org suspension was thought to be related to that. Apparently it is not.
Woah woah woah there cowboy! That’s only ok when you’re big tech, not when you do it against them. Sheesh, the nerve on this guy…
Yeah like it’s fine if you’re Meta (Facebook) and you pirate books to train AI, but if you say it’s for human knowledge, so that a poor person in a third world country who might pull in $100 a month can still have access to books and music… they figure it’s worth it if a bunch of spoiled Americans can also get it for free, as long as they seed.
I see, it’s a good article: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/01/judge-orders-annas-archive-to-delete-scraped-data-no-one-thinks-it-will-comply/