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Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team

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

#421

Post by AngryData »

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…

I think part of the question though is also, would they have been as popular as they were without piracy, which does provide some advertising benefits through audience exposure. It is easy to say a really popular game would still be popular without piracy, but some lesser known games might never have gained any attention at all if there weren't enough people spreading word about it. Of course trying to quantify the sales and word-of-mouth benefits from that sort of thing is extremely difficult.

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

#422

Post by fmajid »

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?

For fast access

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

#423

Post by KeplerBoy »

qingcharles wrote: post #330
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.

Can confirm this is happening. But the money paid is tiny. Think thousands of dollars, not millions. Not enough to keep the lights on. I would assume they do pretty well from donations.

Never assume anyone does well from donations. That's rarely the case.

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

#424

Post by jonasdoesthings »

starik36 wrote: post #382
wiseowise wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Do you like to give away your work for free? Please do tell us what it is you work on and where we can get it for free.

Most Open Source maintainers give away their work for free.

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

#425

Post by dr_dshiv »

“This website is blocked

European sanctions

The Council of Europe has decided that the websites of RT (formerly Russia Today) and Sputnik News may no longer be transmitted. The website you are trying to visit falls under this European sanction.

VodafoneZiggo is obligated to enforce the sanction and has blocked the website.”

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

#426

Post by teekert »

StevigeHoning wrote: post #419
teekert wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Set proton VPN to Albania and enjoy the full internet is my experience.

Whats up with Albania?

Idk, I went there a couple of times, I just love the people, the country. It’s a trip back in time. So it was my “random pick” for an exit node. And now I can read rt.com, sail the high seas, open any libgen or Anna's Archive. They're not part of the EU, seem far away from it (no euro, guarded borders, ditched their communist dictator who completely isolated the country ~40 years ago). Perhaps they are less easily coerced into censoring as practiced by countries primarily governed based on GDP and what the big corps want (although everybody seems to smoke everywhere so they could use some of that EU influence).

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

#427

Post by troupo »

computerdork wrote: post #371
troupo wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Music got commoditized. In the 90s the good bands got lucky that their distributors picked them up and promoted them etc. You just don't remember the amount of crap that was on at any given point in time. Today you have instant access to millions of songs around the world in every genre imaginable: https://everynoise.com/ And not just to the whatever few records your local store carried, or what the Big Four paid the…

I do agree that youtube has made it much easier to self-promote, and that today's model has replaced the old one and is doing decently. Still, the at least by the numbers, the music industry is still smaller than it used to be. Unfortunately, money is a powerful resource, and it's not like the music industry took everything and completely screwed over the musicians. They helped struggling musicians survive, giving th…

> I do agree that youtube has made it much easier to self-promote

And Spotify. And Apple Music, to an extent. And even SoundCloud.

> They helped struggling musicians survive, giving them a chance to make it,

Survivorship bias. You're completely ignoring the artists that never got the attention of distributors, or got immediately dropped, or dropped after the first disappointing (by studio standards) sales, or screwed out of revenue and royalties, or...

Or those who never got a chance at all because Sony or Warner paid radio stations to promote who they wanted to promote: https://www.npr.org/2005/11/23/5024411/warner-agrees-to-sett...

> Labels still do this today, but it's just the number of opportunities for musicians is smaller.

Labels still do this to the same extent as before. They spend about as much money and, percentage wise, keep as much money as before. It's even easier for them because a whole layer of physically printing and distributing media (tapes and CDs) is gone.

And the number of opportunities for artists increased, but became more complex.

In 2012 an otherwise unknown outside South Korea artist reached a billion views on Youtube resulting in worldwide tours. Now there are millions of unknowns on the same platforms. It's never been easier to promote your art, and it's never been more complex because there are so many others.

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

#428

Post by pcthrowaway »

joha4270 wrote: post #223
MYEUHD wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC it was shown that piracy increases sales for books. For example, if you pirated an ebook and liked it, you'd likely buy a physical copy.

Even if that might be the case now, I doubt that holds if piracy becomes truly widespread. I would suspect A pirates book B and tells C about it, C buys book B is a lot more common than A pirates book B and likes it enough to buy it I have no data to support this, and while I have paid for things I could access for free, but I'm sufficiently pessimistic about human nature to think that's the norm.

Piracy has been "truly widespread" for decades now.

Most people who are able to, still pay for things, especially if they're convenient. Even when those services actually add additional restrictions to their access to the media they think they're paying for.

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

#429

Post by account42 »

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 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 pleading with people to actually buy the game instead of copying it. Eventually they called it quits and gave up because the game, while very popular, was so widely pirated that few people actually paid.

Ok, but why? Whas the game actually unprofitable or did they just feel bad about some people getting it for free. You need to remember that a pirated copy does not equal a lost sale - in fact, sales may even be higher than they would be without piracy as popularity gained from pirated copies also translates to more legitimate buyers.

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

#430

Post by account42 »

kemayo wrote: post #362
Aurornis wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 spe…

> It's certainly more than 0%, though.

Is it? You also need to account to sales that only happened because someone learned of the game via a pirated copy.

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