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Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team

annas-archive.org

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

#361

Post by msp26 »

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…

The french comic pirate scene has an interesting rule where they keep a ~6 month time lag on what they release. The scene is small enough that the rule generally works.

It's a really good trade-off. I would never have gotten into these comics without piracy but now if something catches my eye, I don't mind buying on release (and stripping the DRM for personal use).

Most of my downloading is closer to collecting/hoarding/cataloguing behaviour but if I fully read something I enjoy, I'll support the author in some way.

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

#362

Post by kemayo »

Aurornis wrote: post #322
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…

> Am I an exception? Years ago I was following development of an indie game. The developers wanted to provide a DRM-free experience. The game had some online functionality (leaderboard or something). They were surprised when the number of accounts accessing the online functionality exceeded their sales by a dramatic number. The developer updates grew more and more sad as they switched from discussing new features to…

The difficult bit is working out what percentage of pirated copies are actually replacing a sale that would have happened if the content wasn't available to pirate. The more dramatic industry numbers like to claim it's 100%, which is ridiculous. It's certainly more than 0%, though.

I'd assume that for your indie game, there were a lot of people who wound up thinking "I would play this if it's free, but I wouldn't spend $X" on it. Adding successful DRM wouldn't have done anything to them but drive them away, and reduce the amount of buzz the game received. But then, particularly in the indie game space, maybe trading away a lot of buzz for a couple hundred more full-price game sales would have been completely worth it...

This is where the concept of services like Xbox Game Pass seem to be landing. Once someone has paid their fairly-small-amount each month, every game is now "free". Much like fairly-cheap streaming music basically stopped music piracy from being mainstream, cheap game-services might have the same impact on the game industry.

Though, much like streaming music, whether it turns out to be economically viable for the average game studio is certainly a question.

(For the sake of completeness: I don't pirate anything, so I have nothing to justify here.)

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

#363

Post by selimthegrim »

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 .

I bought a book or two after downloading but they had forewords in new editions or I had wanted to search something in the digital edition quickly as a one off and peruse the physical copy at leisure later.

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

#364

Post by boomboomsubban »

Aurornis wrote: post #322
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…

> Am I an exception? Years ago I was following development of an indie game. The developers wanted to provide a DRM-free experience. The game had some online functionality (leaderboard or something). They were surprised when the number of accounts accessing the online functionality exceeded their sales by a dramatic number. The developer updates grew more and more sad as they switched from discussing new features to…

Your story sounds like "World of Goo," which reported a 90% piracy rate from comparing unique IP addresses to number sold. Despite that, they didn't quit and recently released "World of Goo 2" still DRM free.

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

#365

Post by [deleted] »

msp26 wrote: post #361
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…

The french comic pirate scene has an interesting rule where they keep a ~6 month time lag on what they release. The scene is small enough that the rule generally works. It's a really good trade-off. I would never have gotten into these comics without piracy but now if something catches my eye, I don't mind buying on release (and stripping the DRM for personal use). Most of my downloading is closer to collecting/hoard…

[deleted]

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

#366

Post by bibabaloo »

tkel wrote: post #331
solidsnack9000 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allegedly, some companies with deep pockets have paid them for access to their collection. The collection turns out to be useful for training LLMs.

Source on this claim? All their torrents are released publicly. Why would "companies with deep pockets" need to pay them?

Because they have an interest in the ongoing work of archiving of new things I guess

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

#367

Post by computerdork »

kelnos wrote: post #245
computerdork wrote: post #202

Know am going to be downvoted into oblivion, but as a composer, can see it from the side of creators. Yeah, making their products free is starving these industries. For instance, in music, there is already very little money in music (think about how many musicians you personally know who can make a living off of music, besides being a music teacher). And, the music industry is still not even the same size as it was i…

I'm not convinced that every pirate download equals a lost sale. Certainly sometimes it does, but I don't think it's the case that creators lose much revenue due to piracy. I think the big music labels and giant publishers might -- might . But that's not the same as creators losing money. And we're also unable to count how often piracy results in concert ticket sales that may have otherwise not happened. > but when y…

Appreciate your view, and am no expert at this, but as you mentioned, the numbers do speak for themselves. Yeah, it isn't just "the good old days," we all who followed the music industry saw a huge decline in revenue in the 2000's (it was catastrophic and was as punch to the gut). It just kept going down year after year. And as you mentioned, if you adjust for inflation, the size if the industry is still smaller than it used to be...

...Also, it seems like it depends on where you look for yearly revenue. At least this research article is more like what I saw (although, not sure what numbers are correct): https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-Recorded-Music-In...

Regardless, yeah, the music industry took a huge hit, and is looking better these days with streaming (which saved it), but it's still not great.

>And that's the thing: if the prices are too high, in the absence of piracy, most people are going to just do without. There's no lost sale when someone decides to do without rather than pay a price they thing is unreasonable.

Agreed, if prices are too high, yes, they'll do with out. But in the past, on average, it seems like most people did actually purchase CD's and DVD's, me included. Most of us had quite a sizable collection, and would routinely visit music stores to pay $20 to buy a CD, just because they liked one or two songs (and that's in 90's money). Yes, the music industry took a lot of the share of revenue, but that industry still is what promoted and supported the musicians.

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

#369

Post by nemomarx »

jacquesm wrote: post #318
aidenn0 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's complicated. Many years ago, I was involved in a movie release group. Pretty much everybody in that group owned more VHSs/DVDs than the typical person. This is probably not surprising, since the time and effort one needs to put into that is rather large. Those who only downloaded were more of a mixed bag; some of them were not in the US and might not be able to see a domestic release of the movies any time soon.…

I spent a small fortune on a record collection. Then the record format was abandoned and it was all CDs. I spent a small fortune re-buying that same record collection, insofar as the records were even available as CDs. Then we went all digital (yes, I know CDs were already digital) and it became MP3s. So I ripped my CD collection and assigned them to a box in my attic. I will not be spending money on spotify or whate…

I can't even pay for a second copy of an ebook for friends reliably. They literally won't take your money for cross region sales or whatever due to asinine market restrictions

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

#370

Post by jasonfarnon »

bawolff wrote: post #332
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you oppose libraries on the same principle? No, because libraries have to buy the books! If lots of people check out a book, the library will have to buy more copies! Yes, maybe the authors loose out on some revenue, but there's a clear relationship between number of readers and the author getting paid for their work. This is also why I thought the Internet Archive's lending lending library was great! I'm aware…

If we take this to the logical extreme - someone had to buy the book in order to upload it to Anna's archive in the first place.

"If we take this to the logical extreme "

I think this is a situation where doing so doesn't make much sense. This is all about compromising, I think that must be the premise.

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