Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by fwip » Mon, Aug 18, 2025, 8:11 PM UTC

trinsic2 wrote: post #203

brianstorms wrote: post #174

Fuck that site. Offers people links to free PDF downloads of my book that I worked on for 32 years and finally got published by Pantheon Books in 2017. I didn't work all that fucking time for criminals like these to just break copyright law and make the book available for free. Fuck Anna's Archive, and I hope they go down in legal flames ASAP.

Cultures are created to protect power structures. Culture is the enforcer of authority. Culture distorts principles in order to defend the authority of evil. Culture must convince you that it is not wrong when law subjugates your worth and destroys your freedom. Culture convinces people of this by perverting the concept of morality. Morality is liberty. Immorality is evil. The exercise and defense of freedom are mora…

I think you must be using an unusual definition of culture. As I understand it, culture is, broadly speaking, the shared values and practices of a group of people.

The only way to avoid having culture, in the usual sense, is to prevent groups of people from existing.

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

#252

Post by xvector » Mon, Aug 18, 2025, 8:11 PM UTC

justin66 wrote: post #73

"Anna’s Archive itself has organized some of the largest scrapes: we acquired tens of millions of files from IA Controlled Digital Lending" Not really helping in the big picture, here, guys.

Super selfish of Anna's Archive to mention this. "Look what we did!" with zero thought to the consequences for others.

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

#253

Post by Wowfunhappy » Mon, Aug 18, 2025, 8:12 PM UTC

skeaker wrote: post #246

ChadNauseam wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because otherwise there's no incentive not to boycott. One of the nice things about capitalism is that even unpopular people can make money if they make a product people want to buy. It adds a level of realness to society, above status-games and popularity-contests.

That makes the very silly assumption that the default is to boycott everything, which is really not the case. People at large definitely still default to purchasing things first, for all sorts of reasons from just feeling that it is moral to the service being convenient to just enjoying and wanting to support the work itself. This is self evident in the fact that boycotts essentially never actually kill anything beca…

The default is to not buy something. People don't like loosing money. If you can get something without loosing money, it's super easy to rationalize why you you're skipping the loose money part. People tend to make decisions which are in their financial interest.

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

#254

Post by griffzhowl » Mon, Aug 18, 2025, 8:12 PM UTC

skeaker wrote: post #220

jimbokun wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about writers?

Depends. I've seen some in favor and some against. Academics who have their papers paywalled by publishing entities against their own wills are generally for it.

Academics get their income from their university positions, and don't get any royalties from sales of their articles. Instead, the benefit they get from publishing is to their reputation, and for that it's better for their work to be as available as possible.

It's completely different for a writer who gets their income from sales of their work, obviously

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

#255

Post by fwip » Mon, Aug 18, 2025, 8:13 PM UTC

cakealert wrote: post #88

Can Anna's Archive claim to be a non-profit when it's effectively an illegal enterprise with unknown controllers? They are even offering decent bounties: https://software.annas-archive.li/AnnaArchivist/annas-archiv... Whoever is running it must be doing really well for themselves laundering all that crypto. Also interestingly they don't offer a tor onion service, while the admin is most certainly technically competen…

> he

Is there any particular reason you suspect Anna's Archive to be run by a man?

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

#256

Post by baq » Mon, Aug 18, 2025, 8:13 PM UTC

glimshe wrote: post #208

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Am I an exception? Yes, I think you're an exception, sorry. We will never have real data on this. But simply on its face, I find it extremely hard to believe that most consumers have a strong enough moral compass to go out of their way to buy something they already have access to. Maybe they will for a tiny handful of special books that they want hard copies of, or authors they really like, but not for most media t…

I would not buy a book after downloading it from Anna's archive. But that's the wrong question in my opinion. You should be asking why aren't most books available in a DRM free format? The main reason to download "pirated" books is that they get rid of all annoying barriers that exist in "legitimate" copies. It's a better product .

Perhaps, but it’s a bit moot once you have the book and a reader which opens it. Anna’s archive is a better service because it doesn’t matter what reader you’ve got and the content is there. It was the same with Netflix when it was the only streaming service: it had everything easily accessible.

Gabe figured it out eons ago, steam is the proof.

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

#257

Post by mvdtnz » Mon, Aug 18, 2025, 8:14 PM UTC

dfxm12 wrote: post #209

lolive wrote: post #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…

I don't think I follow. There's no recommendation engine in AA, right? Do you download a bunch of books from AA, read them, then if you happened to like one enough, you will buy it from a local bookstore?

[flagged]

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

#258

Post by baq » Mon, Aug 18, 2025, 8:14 PM UTC

jancsika wrote: post #169

ofou wrote: post #61

Shadow libraries maintainers deserve a Nobel prize for their contributions to humanity. Satoshi would be proud.

Satoshi's pride: * ability to fund shadow libraries without fear of censorship * lists with a single item still count as lists

> ability to fund shadow libraries without fear of censorship

Bitcoin is much worse than cash in that regard

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

#259

Post by lolive » Mon, Aug 18, 2025, 8:15 PM UTC

Phelinofist wrote: post #158

lolive wrote: post #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…

Can you recommend some of the obscure stuff?

Ok, there are not only obscure stuff. More blasts from the past, that really would deserve a better exposure. In term of non-Marvel/DC comics, things from Bernie Wrightson, P Craig Russel, George Besse, Alberto Breccia, Moebius, Druillet, Scuitten/Peeters, and others. In term of letters, once again the almight Lovecraft letters are really jaw-dropping ! For movies, I discovered Vincent Price, Sam Peckimpah, John Ford, Wim Wenders.

So nothing really out of the "normality", but they are no longer marketed and are slowly fading to grey.

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

#260

Post by justin66 » Mon, Aug 18, 2025, 8:15 PM UTC

kleiba wrote: post #160

om8 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? They acquired books, that’s what they do

The OP is referring to the ongoing legal struggles the IA is facing wrt. to their version of an online library (with digital book lending).

Precisely. To be clear, I don't agree with a comment upthread saying the "shoutout" is what might potentially do harm to the IA in court. I think the actual act of having scraped all those books from the IA's lending system could potentially do harm to the IA in court. The publishers can now point to all the copies of the books in the wild that IA had in their lending system and argue that IA's system is not legally acceptable. It was on shaky enough ground already.