What advantage do you get from this being an MCP server rather than simply a command line tool? Genuinely curious, as I'm trying to develop my mental model of when to use one or the other. Lovely project!
Thank you, sir!
Show HN: MCP server for searching and downloading documents from Anna's Archive
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Re: Show HN: MCP server for searching and downloading documents from Anna's Archive
#42Interesting project! I’m a little surprised that Claude is willing to call these functions. The demo screenshot is downloading a public domain work, I wonder if it would also happily go along with requests for Harry Potter or other copyrighted material?
Technically, those are already in Claude...
Re: Show HN: MCP server for searching and downloading documents from Anna's Archive
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I wonder if it would also happily go along with requests for Harry Potter or other copyrighted material? There's no way to protect against this. Anna's Archive doesn't include licence information in their data fields. It would be helpful to integrate with another data source that could warn MCP server users when they're attempting potentially risky actions. Please let me know if you have ideas on how to achieve thi…
It's worse than you'd expect, there's a sizable subset of works with unknown or uncertain license status. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_works_in_the_United_States https://martincopenhaver.github.io/files/orphanworks.pdf [PDF] Estimated 25-50 million books are orphaned works, and their copyright holder may step forward at any time after you've treated it as unlicensed, it's perpetually uncertain (but showing due d…
Ah, wow, thank you for the links and additional context. This is new information to me.
> Their copyright holder may step forward at any time after you've treated it as unlicensed.
Does this mean that Satoshi can just come and claim that a whole industry is using his/her copyrighted material?
Re: Show HN: MCP server for searching and downloading documents from Anna's Archive
#44My understanding of Anna's Archive is that one has to download large zip files (>10 Gb) containing thousands of books even if one wants only a single book. Am I correct here? Does this MCP server allow one to download just a single book? I remember once using an IPFS based tool to download a single 200-year-old, out-of-copyright copy of "Last of the Mohicans" from Anna's Archive. It worked, but was very very complica…
I've downloaded single books several times recently (annas-archive.org in the browser): - search for book - tap a result - see a list of links to download mirrors (under 'slow downloads'), tap a link - get a countdown timer - timer expires, download links appear - click a link, book downloads just like any other download
So just 8 or 9 steps to grab a e-book, instead of just letting the LLM recall it from training data... /s
Re: Show HN: MCP server for searching and downloading documents from Anna's Archive
#45[flagged]
Re: Show HN: MCP server for searching and downloading documents from Anna's Archive
#46Re: Show HN: MCP server for searching and downloading documents from Anna's Archive
#47Why do people keep building servers for such a silly protocol?
Re: Show HN: MCP server for searching and downloading documents from Anna's Archive
#48What advantage do you get from this being an MCP server rather than simply a command line tool? Genuinely curious, as I'm trying to develop my mental model of when to use one or the other. Lovely project!
COMMAND LINE: You have to instruct your AI what this tool is and what it should be used for. MCP: You paste one command to register the MCP and your AI will always know what it is and where/why it should be used.
> COMMAND LINE: You have to instruct your AI what this tool is and what it should be used for.
Or—and please bear with me, I know this may sound insane—you call the command-line tool yourself, reliably, fast, with little overhead, just like it has worked for decades.
I know, I know, soon most people won’t even know how to unzip their pants without spending unnecessary amounts of electricity and waiting for several seconds for an LLM response, but believe me that just using your hands is a solution worth checking out.
Re: Show HN: MCP server for searching and downloading documents from Anna's Archive
#49[flagged]
The real crime is an economic system that limits the spread of knowledge and access to other "human rights" by requiring everyone to hustle to survive (and, if possible, increase capital gains for the financial overlords) when we would already be technologically equipped to feed and house well all of mankind, instead of letting thousands of children starve to death each day and restricting access to education so that billions miss out on their intellectual development - a void easily filled with addictive media full of rage and distraction. Pirating books is just a symptom of this wretched system. And it is not enough - RISE, HN! .. towards RBE & beyond..
Re: Show HN: MCP server for searching and downloading documents from Anna's Archive
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMO, you're needlessly taking a defensive stand. It's ok to take a forward looking stand on how access to knowledge should be.
Oh come on. We all know there’s pretty much every novel you’ll find at Barnes&Noble on Anna's Archive as a pirated copy, not just scientific papers. At least be honest; it’s as much a mundane piracy tool as it is a knowledge repository.
I was absolutely saying that. Novels are part of the knowledge too - a scientific paper and a novel have equal weight