Live data from Hacker News

Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain

arstechnica.com

81–90 of 166 posts

Re: Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain

#81
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fun theory but there's no evidence that was their intention with the name... From what they've said, it's about "spotting" and "identifying" music and music trends. But it seems like mostly it was just a somewhat nonsense word that was easy to remember and whose domain name was available. Especially since it's popular as a paid service without ads .

I love random folk etymologies, especially when they posit sinister conspiracies along the way -- thanks for the concise correction. Wikipedia confirms on both counts: According to Ek, the company's title was initially misheard from a name shouted by Lorentzon. Later they conceived a portmanteau of "spot" and "identify". It also kinda blows my mind how common it is to listen to a ton of Spotify without paying, NGL! I…

In any case they have an agreement with copyright holders. Anna Archive does not.

IP laws are broken, keep extending protection, and do not prevent distribution exclusivity.

I could sell a license to Bob who can sell my arts to you. But I won't give a license to Alice to even be able to enjoy the art for the fee I charged Bob, and I can tell Bob to do the same and not give it away to Alice at any cost. The law would say that's fine, and let's even arrest Bob if he ever sells to Alice.

Re: Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain

#82
post #7

But you can't even download the allegedly infringing material from the .org site. You can just read about it? So they're abusing the All Writs Act to take down a site that they think is related to some undetermined future nebulously bad thing for their business. If I wasn't on Anna's side before, I sure am now.

> "think is related to some undetermined future nebulously bad thing"

Anna's Archive made threats in writing to distribute, concretely and specifically, the plaintiff's copyrighted works as torrents.

Re: Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain

#83
post #3

Unfortunately for Spotify, court orders are ineffective against foreign nationals sharing information. Copyright enforcement is as futile as the encryption "export restrictions" the US and other countries tried in the 90s and early 2000s.

Yeah, but TFA notes how Anna's Archive is dependent on US-based infrastructure, including Cloudflare. As much as I love Anna's Archive, I feel like this Spotify move was a misstep on their part. The music industry seems far scarier than the publishing industry when it comes to copyright suits, which means they have a lot to lose here by poking the bear, but there are already plenty of places to find pirated music, wh…

It's a cool publicity stunt for Anna's, and perhaps the hackers responsible for getting the data simply wanted to show it off and leave Spotify with some egg on their face. I know I wouldn't be able to stop myself from publishing it if I was in their position, foolish as it may be.

Re: Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet all those songs certainly have illegal copies already being distributed on the internet. So what was the actual harm being prevented here? There's a huge difference between a ton of individual torrents or files you need to individually search for, identify, of varying quality, that may be mislabeled and have other sorts of quality issues, and which in no way approach "all" music... ...vs a single, shockingly co…

Lossless pirate archives also still exist if you know where to look. Not saying you're wrong, but from a truly material angle, someone dedicated to finding an archive with enough music to start a pirate site need only join one of the existing lossless pirate sites and copy theirs. I don't see how Anna's making it easier negates the fact that it can already be done

I dont think the idea that it can be already done matters though. You just have to show harm or intent to harm, and the archive had it.

Selective prosecution isn't a strong defense in civil court.

Re: Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also a big party of why artists don’t earn shit. Spotify will never be able to pay out enough if people don’t think this music is worth paying for. They want access to every new album but refuse to pay how much a single new CD would have cost back in the day

Aside from all the middle men nibbling at artist take, its also a symptom of trading on fundamentally un-scarce resources. A better business model is selling access to the scarce things like the artist themselves. Trying to maintain stranglehold on a particular order of zeros and ones is always going to be tough.

That’s part of the reason that artists have made a bigger push toward selling merch as a means of making a living. But that feels so arbitrary and unsustainable to me.

Why should I buy a tshirt from somebody because I like their music? Fashion design is its own unrelated art form.

Re: Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain

#86

what‘s in it for spotify? i can‘t think of a single person who‘d stop paying for streaming services (music) in favour of going back to illegally download or (or even legally purchase) songs & managing their own library. m a y b e some devs would. but those thinking about it, wouldn‘t be stopped like that. i am thinking about it, yet i just renewed my subscription because i lack time & motivation to crawl down yet ano…

I would go back in an instant. I think a lot of people would if it is convenient. Furthermore, all someone has to do is make a Spotify clone to interact with the archive and you have consumed their entire business.

Even if you didnt want a DIY solution, I bet you would accept a free clone, along with every other customer

Re: Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>On January 2, the music companies asked for a temporary restraining order, and the court granted it the same day. That pretty much tells me all about what courts care about. Can't get TRO's when the government is attacking its people, but when there's a sniff of sharing music? Instant hammer. EDIT: to answer a response I got about "courts aren't supposed to 'care'", that's the point of a TRO: >To obtain a TRO, a par…

Law is made of people and politics touches everything. Even with separate of powers, lobbies make sure those they represent get good treatments.

I guess this is a naive question, but where are the lobbies that care about the people? Or even common decency at this point? It really feels like people are treating the US less as an investment and more like a sinking ship to abandon. And they were the ones that shot the holes to begin with.

Re: Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain

#88
post #7

But you can't even download the allegedly infringing material from the .org site. You can just read about it? So they're abusing the All Writs Act to take down a site that they think is related to some undetermined future nebulously bad thing for their business. If I wasn't on Anna's side before, I sure am now.

> "think is related to some undetermined future nebulously bad thing" Anna's Archive made threats in writing to distribute, concretely and specifically, the plaintiff's copyrighted works as torrents.

[deleted]

Re: Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actually committing a crime is not the same as saying you will commit a crime. No, but it can have a lot of legal repercussions, like restraining orders, you can be arrested for making a threat, search warrants may be issued... and in the case of corporations, restraining orders and injunctions. Like here. This is all very standard stuff. There's absolutely nothing exceptional about the court process in this partic…

>On January 2, the music companies asked for a temporary restraining order, and the court granted it the same day. That pretty much tells me all about what courts care about. Can't get TRO's when the government is attacking its people, but when there's a sniff of sharing music? Instant hammer. EDIT: to answer a response I got about "courts aren't supposed to 'care'", that's the point of a TRO: >To obtain a TRO, a par…

[deleted]

Re: Spotify won court order against Anna's Archive, taking down .org domain

#90
post #15

Deezer has in its onboarding flow a pretty cool "get your lists from spotify" feature. from all liked/currated songs - a few thousands - it could not match about 2.

Tried moving there something like a year ago, the service didn't work at all, iirc the UI was awful and confusing and once I got around it, there was a lot of my tracks that couldn't be imported. I hate that Spotify is the one service I still can't part with, self-hosting nextcloud emails and such.
Post reply on HN