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Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team

annas-archive.org

131–140 of 560 posts

Re: Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, what? Authors and rights holders are supposed to just take it? Copyright law exists for a reason. Trying to improve an LLM doesn't give you the right to flout our legal system. Yes, other countries might have an advantage in LLM training as a result but so be it.

> Authors and rights holders are supposed to just take it? If it's judged as fair use, then yes. And then it's not flouting anything. Remember the whole point of fair use is to benefit society by allowing reuse of material in ways that don't directly copy large portions of the material verbatim. For example, nonfiction authors already "just take it" when reviews describe the main points of their book without paying t…

> Remember the whole point of fair use is to benefit society by allowing reuse of material in ways that don't directly copy large portions of the material verbatim.

That's a rather bastardized and twisted representation of copyright and fair use.

The "whole point" of copyright was to promote the authorship of original creative works by legally protecting the financial income of those authors. The "whole point" of fair use was to make exceptions in cases where it's clear that the usage doesn't result in a market substitute and deprive original authors of their income.

The end-goal of LLMs is to ingest all of that original content and reproduce it with expert-level accuracy, promising to be the know-all, end-all product. If wildly optimistic predictions of LLM proponents turn out to be correct then they will never buy a book again, they will have no reason to. And this is precisely what the copyright was designed to protect authors against.

Re: Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team

#132

> In recent weeks we’ve seen increased attacks on our mission. A pretty rich thing to say when your mission is piracy. I'm not against piracy at all, quite the contrary, but this is quite laughable.

It's an interesting peek into their milieu. For those in the club, the statement might seem self-evident.

Re: Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team

#133
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If #1 is a reference to a famous quote from Steward Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, it's only part of the quote. The rest is relevant: > On the one hand you have—the point you’re making Woz—is that information sort of wants to be expensive because it is so valuable—the right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information almost wants to be free because the costs of ge…

That's not a real tension. There is no case where the inherent value of some commodity keeps its price high despite easy availability. That's the point of the "diamonds in the desert" thought experiment. Inherent value provides a ceiling on the price of whatever it is. Availability also provides a ceiling on the price. If I give you two theorems that say C < 300 and also C < 10, why would you describe those as being…

The tension arises because in some cases, at least for a while, the availability can be suppressed. Like when some expert releases an expensive ebook or video course "Secrets of X". Ofc many such books are scams, but assume for sake of argument the information is actually valuable. The initial buyers are motivated not to share it. It remains a scarce commodity for a while. But all it takes is one person to make a torrent, and the game is over. So there are two incentives -- one trying to keep it scarce, and the other trying to make it free.

Re: Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment seems like a non sequitur to me. Whether something is a "non-profit" has nothing to do with whether it receives or spends money. (See, e.g. the American Red Cross's ~$4B/yr budget.) It's about what it does with the money it has. Obviously, since Anna's Archive is breaking the law, it can't conform itself to the normal legal/regulatory system that governs non-profit organizations. It can certainly still c…

At least in the US, claiming that you are a nonprofit implies that contributions are tax deductible. Claiming that you are a nonprofit when contributions are not tax deductible might be considered fraudulent.

Not true. There are different classes of nonprofit and they are not all tax deductible. Some nonprofits opt to forgo pursuing that status because it involves a lot of extra administration/filing requirements.

Re: Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team

#137

Also how can one totally anonymously pay them?

It doesn't look like they accept from anything that strikes me as being remotely anonymous, which is surprising.

https://annas-archive.org/donate

I'll also say that when too much money starts becoming a part of this, trouble will increase dramatically. I realize this sort of endeavor costs a lot of time and money, but it's a line we should probably be aware of.

Re: Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No such thing as free when bandwidth costs money. Any service online that is handing out things for free without restriction is getting their return through scrupulus means and shouldnt be trusted. Anna's Archive straddles the line enough to allow people to download books for free but not at too great an expense to the volunteers who pay out of pocket to support the project.

So what about the authors and creators of the works? They did it for free?

they already work almost for free, since all the money goes to the publisher and retailer.

out of $20 book, the authors earn about $1 - $1.5, for e-books its about $1.7 - $2

The value from book sales goes to retailer and publisher: two large corporations, and in case of amazon - a single big corporation

so please cry me a river about amazon's lost profits earned at the back of the book authors

Re: Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team

#140
I choose the books I buy, from Anna's Archive. I choose the comics I buy from readComicsOnline. I choose the [european] graphic novels I buy from #WONTTELL.

And I am one of the best customers of these 3 physical shops, in my town.

So sure, I don't buy the latest trends based on ads. I investigate a lot to buy GREAT stuff. Sometimes the shopkeeper has headaches to find the obscure stuff I discovered online that NOBODY knows it exists.

Am I an exception?

I don't know but those services are great to maintain a freedom of choice.

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