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

torrentfreak.com

331–340 of 470 posts

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

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they lose them they will create new ones, and someone will update the wikipedia page with the active URL(s). Worst case scenario they could solely rely on Tor URLs, which would be virtually impossible to shut down.

> virtually impossible to shut down It has been proven through at least Snowden files that multiple world governments have been working for decades now to operate as many tor nodes as they can in the hopes of decloaking as much traffic as possible, should they need to go after specific people. I don't think it's safe to say this is virtually impossible. They have more money and resources than you can fathom. Even if…

Governments need tor to work to keep their spy network safe. Running a bunch of nodes to ensure the system is online makes sense for intelligence agencies, no traffic sniffing required.

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

#332

Last week, I set-up a navidrome (docker compose) server after tagging my files with MusicBrainz and beets. I serve it over a private network (tailnet) using tailscale serve. It works on all my devices and on iOS with an app called Nautiline. Nautiline has a feature where it will switch between my local network address and my tailnet address seamlessly. It was so simple, I can't actually believe it works. It has CarPl…

How are you feeding the client Lidarr, soularr?

soulseek, manually downloading files.

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

#333
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.

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

"Piracy" as a term for copying others' creative works dates back to the 1600s, and is in a 1736 dictionary:

> The term "piracy" has been used to refer to the unauthorised copying, distribution and selling of works in copyright.[8] In 1668 publisher John Hancock wrote of "some dishonest Booksellers, called Land-Pirats, who make it their practise to steal Impressions of other mens Copies" in the work A String of Pearls: or, The Best Things Reserved till Last by Thomas Brooks.[10]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#%22Pira...

To act shocked and offended that the term points to two different activities in 2026 is non-sensical: that ship has sailed long ago.

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

#334

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.

> like it ended for Aaron Schwartz in the worst. They’ll… be offered 4 months in prison, or 6 months with an opportunity to ask the judge for less? I don’t know about you, but to me that seems way more chill than how the TPB guys were treated!

> > like it ended for Aaron Schwartz in the worst.

>They’ll… be offered 4 months in prison, or 6 months with an opportunity to ask the judge for less?

Surely the implication is that they'll end up being found dead, as happened to Aaron Swartz.

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

#335

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!

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.

They are almost certainly being financed by the AI lobby as they have been open about providing API access to companies training AI in exchange for “donations.”[1][2][3] Having all of this data available online for free gives those looking for training data plausible deniability. It would turn into a huge legal headache if OpenAI had scraped Spotify directly, but if they launder it through a third party they can at least try to argue they weren’t responsible for the infringement.

Spotify got started doing the same thing, though.[4]

[1]: https://annas-archive.gl/blog/llms-txt.html (“Making an enterprise-level donation will get you fast SFTP access to all the files, which is faster than torrents.”)

[2]: https://annas-archive.gl/blog/duxiu-exclusive.html (“We’re looking for some company or institution to help us with OCR and text extraction for a massive collection we acquired, in exchange for exclusive early access. After the embargo period, we will of course release the entire collection.”)

[3]: https://annas-archive.gl/donate (“Enterprise-level donation or exchange for new collections (e.g. new scans, OCR’ed datasets). […] We welcome large donations from wealthy individuals or institutions. For donations over $5,000, please contact us directly at Contact email.”)

[4]: https://torrentfreak.com/spotifys-beta-used-pirate-mp3-files... (“Rumors that early versions of Spotify used ‘pirate’ MP3s have been floating around the Internet for years. People who had access to the service in the beginning later reported downloading tracks that contained ‘Scene’ labeling, tags, and formats, which are the tell-tale signs that content hadn’t been obtained officially.”)

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

#336
post #215

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.

Fwiw, piratebay continues to be the -to my knowledge- biggest public tracker out there, with basically every media production available. And I think that was his point. They may ruin some people's life's... but aside from that, they achieve nothing.

> piratebay continues to be the -to my knowledge- biggest public tracker out there

It has been compromised for more than a decade. The site is impossible to navigate without an adblocker due to malicious redirect ads and most of the major torrents are being monitored by rights management companies who will notify the user’s ISP of suspected infringement.

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

#337

Last week, I set-up a navidrome (docker compose) server after tagging my files with MusicBrainz and beets. I serve it over a private network (tailnet) using tailscale serve. It works on all my devices and on iOS with an app called Nautiline. Nautiline has a feature where it will switch between my local network address and my tailnet address seamlessly. It was so simple, I can't actually believe it works. It has CarPl…

> ...scrobbling to MusicBrainz...

Forgive the out of touch questions, but, doing what? And why?

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

#338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes stealing other peoples things to 'give them away' is very noble. The meta data is useless to me. I can no longer build an app on top of Spotify's API because they've had to lock it down.

Have you considered blaming Spotify or the music industry instead for how ridiculously closed the entire system is?

$10 a month for all the music every recorded. Free with ads. How much more open can they make it?

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

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Fair point, i had no idea they were involved with music before this.

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

#340

This doesn't change things much , besides making domain name registration more difficult, but I continue to think this Spotify thing was a really dumb move on the part of Anna's Archive. AA is providing a valuable service to tons of people who don't have access to these books otherwise. There's a strong argument to be made for the moral goodness of that -- that even if it's illegal, it's at least in the spirit of a p…

>mostly widely available on YouTube already

This is the wrong way to look at things, the way YT is going then yt-dlp will be completely locked out within the next 3 years so essentially all that archive is about to be locked within Youtube.

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