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

torrentfreak.com

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

#261

Post by weinzierl »

Salgat wrote: post #238
weinzierl wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's not about the money primarily. There are enough parties out there that want the people behind Anna's archive behind bars and I'm afraid this will end the same way as for the Pirate Bay guys in the best case and like it ended for Aaron Schwartz in the worst.

If the operators of Anna's Archive live somewhere like Russia or China, there's a good chance nothing will ever come of any of this legal action. Anna's Archive's biggest challenge is just maintaining availability of infrastructure.

That’s a big if. My bet is that they are in Central or Northern Europe, just like the Pirate Bay people. Unlikely anyone in Russia or China would care to offer a service primarily to the benefit of the western world. I bet there are similar sites in the Runet or behind the Great Firewall we don't even know about and that simply don't bother catering to us.

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

#262

Post by troupo »

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…

> 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.

> While Spotify puts real price pressure on artists,

You know that Spotify doesn't pay artists, right? That Spotify pays 70% of its revenue to rights holders before it sees a single cent itself? And that it's rights holders who pay artists?

I wish the angry pitchfork mob for once managed to attack the actual culprits: the Big Four. Nope, that day will never come.

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

#263

Post by toyg »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #43
Ragnarork wrote: post #19

> In addition to the damages award, Rakoff entered a permanent worldwide injunction Because apparently U.S. courts and judges can do that. The more this is ignored by third-parties outside of the U.S., the better. I'm not against international cooperation regarding common rules (I'm rather for), but the current context certainly doesn't designate the U.S. as a responsible custodian/enforcer of such rules.

It's infuriating but practically true. I had a few services that received illegitimate DMCA notices that I ignored. They were either blatantly fraudulent, automated junk or just not applicable to the law of the country where I'm hosting. They escalated to either my hosting or my domain name provider, who then threatened to cut me off for not complying. No discussion with them would work in my favor. I had to comply w…

Did you engage any lawyer/solicitor? Companies don't care about individuals, but they do fear lawyers.

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

#264

Post by wiseowise »

brailsafe wrote: post #260
comrade1234 wrote: post #48

After getting burned on faked/gamed ratings on a book trilogy where I had bought all three books before I started reading (they were terrible and I gave up during the second book), I now use Anna's archive to download a book and decide if I will pay for it later after reading at least some of it.

Seems like quite an eager purchase. Could you not have borrowed one of them from the library?

That’s what they did by downloading it from the Anna’s Archive.

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

#265

Post by Gander5739 »

crumpled wrote: post #94

Does anyone know the status of this whole release. The metadata was hosted, and now not hosted. I saw a torrent leaked of unpopular tracks. No statements or blogs from AA explaining the metadata removal, or an updated release timeline. Can anyone say more?

They did describe why briefly on reddit, saying it drew too much attention: https://torrentfreak.com/images/aaconf.png

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

#266

Post by wiseowise »

giwook wrote: post #93
randomNumber7 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even more absurd now when the big AI companies train their LLMs on torrented books.

Don't you know that it's okay to steal IP (and skirt laws in general) when you're a big company with lots of money?

One torrent is a crime, breaking all the laws by downloading terabytes of books and processing them is a trillion dollar business.

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

#267

Post by troupo »

OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #107

Ironic, since Spotify started by pirating music[0] [0] https://torrentfreak.com/spotifys-beta-used-pirate-mp3-files...

My feeling is that Spotify couldn't care less about Anna's Archive. It's bad but doesn't hurt Spotify. Just like Steam, convenient distribution trumps piracy, always.

If you look at the plaintiffs, Spotify is number 8 on the list, where the rest are the usual suspects: major record labels and distributors. Seems like Spotify was dragged along because they are beholden to rights holders, and they have to show that they take this seriously, and do something about it.

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

#268

Post by dzogchen »

ezst wrote: post #97
Ragnarork wrote: post #19

> In addition to the damages award, Rakoff entered a permanent worldwide injunction Because apparently U.S. courts and judges can do that. The more this is ignored by third-parties outside of the U.S., the better. I'm not against international cooperation regarding common rules (I'm rather for), but the current context certainly doesn't designate the U.S. as a responsible custodian/enforcer of such rules.

Cory Doctorow made a whole CCC speech about this.

https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification...

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

#269

Post by senko »

kube-system wrote: post #150
bjourne wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No as a concept. Assigning ownership to specific bit patterns is absurd.

So, anyone should be able to sell something called "Coca Cola"?

Nitpick: that’s trademark, not copyright. While it’s bundled under IP, it’s a different beast altogether.

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

#270

Post by Gander5739 »

owlcompliance wrote: post #222

How do people safely download from these torrent sites? Isn't there a risk that you'll download something you wouldn't want on your computer? Yet I hear of many people actively using them, so there must be more to it.

When you download the torrent file, you're trusting that the provider of the torrent file, anna's archive in this case, is giving you legitimate files. Although I'm not sure how you would disguise undesirable files like viruses as ebooks; the file format would be a giveaway.
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