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Anna's Archive loses $322M Spotify piracy case without a fight

torrentfreak.com

121–130 of 470 posts

Re: Anna's Archive loses $322M Spotify piracy case without a fight

#121

I think AA should have stuck to book piracy. Nobody really cares about that.

It's more that the book market is not dominated by only a few big conglomerates.

Yes it is, at least 80% of the book market in the US is controlled by 5 companies: Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Penguin, Hachette, and HarperCollins.

Re: Anna's Archive loses $322M Spotify piracy case without a fight

#122
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immediately makes me think of the vitriol here on HN for the UK trying to enforce their age verification law outside their borders. Will the principle stand, or will it reveal that "USA is always right" is a common held belief

> Immediately makes me think of the vitriol here on HN for the UK trying to enforce their age verification law outside their borders The UK and US aren't unique in this regard. The concept of piracy has been commonly treated as a topic with universal jurisdiction that expands beyond borders, going back to the time when piracy meant people on boats in international waters. I'll be honest that I don't know if or how th…

FWIW, "piracy" of copyrighted works and maritime piracy are completed unrelated legal concepts. Piracy in this context is just a rhetorical euphemism intended for moral framing, and doesn't have any meaningful legal import, notwithstanding that lawyers and judges use it like everybody else.

Relatedly, see Stallman's essay, Did You Say "Intellectual Property"? It's a Seductive Mirage: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html While courts understand "piracy" is euphemistic, the phrase "IPR" has been quite successful in shaping legal theories and jurisprudence.

EDIT: The correct word here isn't euphemism, but dysphemism. TIL. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysphemism

Re: Anna's Archive loses $322M Spotify piracy case without a fight

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Years ago, worked at Walmart. They illegally edited my hours and thieved $100 and change. Put in police report, was told "CIVIL MATTER" Too late now, but for future reference for others: Wage theft reports should go to your state's department of labor. Every state is different but from what I've seen these offices have people who are hungry to catch real wage claims. Companies listen up when the state department of…

used to be the case before the government was gutted.

Fortunately this would be handled by state government, which is cold comfort if you live in the half of the country that is governed by people who hate you for having the audacity to be poor.

Re: Anna's Archive loses $322M Spotify piracy case without a fight

#124
post #99
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immediately makes me think of the vitriol here on HN for the UK trying to enforce their age verification law outside their borders. Will the principle stand, or will it reveal that "USA is always right" is a common held belief

Copying intellectual property is not piracy. This term was co-opted by big industries to insure the cash cattle continue to pay. Piracy has a very specific sting to it. This was a deliberate choice. We don't call burglary "piracy", yet if we relax the definition enough to include IP theft, it is also piracy. GabeN also had the wrong take in that it's a "supply problem" or whatever nonsense he said. GabeN is in fact a…

While I also find various approaches and reasons behind IP governance dumb, copying IP is piracy. In practice, copying some things is unlawful, regardless if we think it shouldn't be or if piracy once only referred to naval burglary.

If you copy a book in a bookstore, or leave a perfect synthetic copy of a natural diamond you take, you'll likely be charged with something. Digitally, that's much a clearer legal charge because copying is easier. So, neither is theft, but that doesn't make it lawful either.

There are valid reasons for enforcing IP rights digitally, because "all content should always be free" doesn't pay the bills when all you (can or want to) do is produce content. No existing society agrees that content producers should be subsidized, so in a society dependent on "earn for yourself", content producers shouldn't be punished.

But the punishment does exceed the severity of the "crime" by a lot, I agree.

Re: Anna's Archive loses $322M Spotify piracy case without a fight

#125

Barbra Streisand effect for them, free PR, and lots of money wasted for the other side

At this point everyone who cares about anna's archive already knows about anna's archive. If the goal is to eventuallu get their domain siezed (forcing them to get a new one and confusing existing users), they probably don't view this as a waste. Not every lawsuit is the Streisand effect.

Fair point, I kinda agree, though I do think they were mostly know for books and music is a whole new sector they entered with a different niche altogether

Re: Anna's Archive loses $322M Spotify piracy case without a fight

#126
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Immediately makes me think of the vitriol here on HN for the UK trying to enforce their age verification law outside their borders The UK and US aren't unique in this regard. The concept of piracy has been commonly treated as a topic with universal jurisdiction that expands beyond borders, going back to the time when piracy meant people on boats in international waters. I'll be honest that I don't know if or how th…

Please don't equivocate “the concept of piracy” as if copyright infringement has any relation to kidnapping and murder.

I think you're missing the point. Piracy, "digital" or real, has always been something that extended beyond borders. They are alleging this is probably due to governments doing said equivocation, in digital piracy case's, although I think it has more to do with the international treaties.

Re: Anna's Archive loses $322M Spotify piracy case without a fight

#127

Spotify was also forced to remove 60 or so endpoints from their API: https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/referenc... ...and add a bunch of other restrictions like limiting API access to premium users, ludicrously increasing the cap for acceptance into the extended quota programme (250k MAU), and so on and so on. So the most fucked in this situation are neither Spotify nor Anna's Archive, but anyone tr…

Forced?

Anna's Archive went public with their announcement late December, Spotify started communicating this API lockdown mid-January. I have no evidence to back that up, but judging purely by the timing, it sure seems like these two events are connected and something Spotify did reluctantly to appease the big labels.

Re: Anna's Archive loses $322M Spotify piracy case without a fight

#128
They will never see a single cent from that, AA will continue to rotate domains and nothing was accomplished, except for spotify's legal team which earned easy money arguing against empty chair in court.

BTW, you can donate and get faster downloads: https://annas-archive.gl/donate

Just donated in honor of this. Up yours spotify!

Re: Anna's Archive loses $322M Spotify piracy case without a fight

#129
post #103
post #96

Trying to shut down a site by going after their domain names will always be a losing battle. As long as the link on their Wikipedia article keeps being updated, it'll remain easy to access. And it would be a pretty shocking attack on free speech if a U.S. court tried to order the Wikimedia Foundation to take that down; I suspect the public response would be similar to when the movie industry tried to get the AACS enc…

who updates wikipedia with the new domains? how do they know the new ones?

They are published on the old ones. The old ones don't all get shut down simultaneously.
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