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

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

#161

Post by gertop »

shevy-java wrote: post #30
fc417fc802 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extra? I thought they were clearly violating IP law to begin with. Unless I misunderstand this is "water is wet" territory (both the judgment as well as what Anna's Archive did).

I do not see any law being violated by Anna's Archive in the slightest.

Just because you disagree with a law doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. You anti copyright shills are exhausting... Why can't you try to attract people to your side to eventually instead effect some real change? Do you just take that much pleasure in being an edgelord that your cause be damned?

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

#162

Post by MarsIronPI »

basisword wrote: post #113
input_sh wrote: post #35

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…

Yep, the API is now basically useless and you can't use it in production. All because of some anonymous greedy dickheads.

Get the metadata from Anna. At least now it's freely available.

Also it's unfair to call Anna greedy. There can't be much money in giving stuff away for free.

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

#163

Post by echelon »

progbits wrote: post #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!

I don't know how to feel about any of this.

First and foremost, I feel like Spotify is scummy. I don't like what they did when they were founded, I don't like what they do to artists.

I hate the hyperscalers being in this business (Google, Apple, Amazon) as that's another thing they do that devalues an otherwise healthy market. Bringing in outside business division revenues to dump on another market's prices is ecologically unhealthy for optimal capitalism and healthy competition.

On the one hand, while I want cheap media, I also want artists to make money. While Spotify puts real price pressure on artists, piracy brings artists absolutely nothing at all.

I get Gabe's value prop with Valve. Make the service easy, cheap, convenient, good, and piracy begins to diminish.

But if there are cheap services and cheap avenues (that still underpay artists), why then switch to a mode that pays artists nothing at all?

Do Bandcamp. Buy merch. Do something to support the artists. I feel like paying piracy services is the opposite of that.

But ethical quandary - doesn't Anna's Archive also support spreading research papers, etc.?

Complicated feelings.

I wish we had better ways to pay originators of things. Art, music, authors, researchers, ICs, ...

I feel like studios and middlemen and companies themselves are entities that exist because rewarding work or value or happiness at the site of exchange is hard/intangible.

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

#165

Post by GolfPopper »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #77
gib444 wrote: 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

I don't understand why it makes you think of that, this is a completely different situation. If Anna's Archive were an upstanding site run by a known operator in compliance with UK law, I would definitely be highly critical of this ruling. But it's actually an anonymously run site that violates most countries' copyright laws and is blocked in the UK.

>an upstanding site run by a known operator

Like Open AI?[1] Or the United States government?[2] While this may not be what you intend, it seems you're suggesting that "upstanding" and "known" parties (i.e. participants with wealth and influence) ought to be above the law.

1. https://www.artificialintelligence-news.com/news/study-claim...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_copyrighted_works_by_th...

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

#166

Post by greatpost »

echelon wrote: post #163
progbits wrote: post #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!

I don't know how to feel about any of this. First and foremost, I feel like Spotify is scummy. I don't like what they did when they were founded, I don't like what they do to artists. I hate the hyperscalers being in this business (Google, Apple, Amazon) as that's another thing they do that devalues an otherwise healthy market. Bringing in outside business division revenues to dump on another market's prices is ecolo…

[dead]

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

#167

Post by ikrenji »

echelon wrote: post #163
progbits wrote: post #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!

I don't know how to feel about any of this. First and foremost, I feel like Spotify is scummy. I don't like what they did when they were founded, I don't like what they do to artists. I hate the hyperscalers being in this business (Google, Apple, Amazon) as that's another thing they do that devalues an otherwise healthy market. Bringing in outside business division revenues to dump on another market's prices is ecolo…

people that get their music from AA would never buy it or pay spotify for it, so the "loss" is completely imaginary. same goes for movies, videogames etc

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

#168

Post by tosti »

echelon wrote: post #163
progbits wrote: post #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!

I don't know how to feel about any of this. First and foremost, I feel like Spotify is scummy. I don't like what they did when they were founded, I don't like what they do to artists. I hate the hyperscalers being in this business (Google, Apple, Amazon) as that's another thing they do that devalues an otherwise healthy market. Bringing in outside business division revenues to dump on another market's prices is ecolo…

The entire record industry is scum and Spotify is just a part of that. It can just die a swift death, would be for the best. Bandcamp is much better. Much lower barrier to entry for everyone and it has my favorite artists.

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

#169

Post by GolfPopper »

stuffn wrote: post #99
gib444 wrote: 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…

>Copying intellectual property is not piracy. This term was co-opted by big industries to insure the cash cattle continue to pay.

Without weighing in on the merits or morals of copying intellectual property, the term 'piratical booksellers' was used in a British House of Commons speech by Thomas Babington Macaulay in 1841. (The speech itself is superb and well worth reading. I included one passage below.)

"At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot… Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create."

https://www.thepublicdomain.org/2014/07/24/macaulay-on-copyr...

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

#170

Post by pessimizer »

TitaRusell wrote: post #112

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

I almost think this Spotify stuff is an op, just like I think the archive.org covid library was an op. Just pulling these targeted orgs into stupid decisions that will leave most of the public unsympathetic, in order to justify more law enforcement resources to go after them.

When I imagine AA going offline for stupid pop music piracy, it makes me angry. They're basically where virtually all of the old archive.org material landed, and nobody else is mirroring it. 95% of it can't be purchased; you either dl it from AA, or do an interlibrary loan through libraries that barely exist anymore, or if you live in some little and/or poor country, you just don't get to read it.

The material in our history of nonfiction writing represents a far wider range of opinion than we're allowed to have right now. Eliminating all of it at once (as libraries throw books away and/or close down), and commercially reissuing approved and reedited things as ebooks (that can be edited again, and again) is a nightmare future. Maybe it's even an optimistic nightmare future - we'll just be expected to accept what the AI says.

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