Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

torrentfreak.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 470 posts

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

#341

Post by crazygringo »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #340
crazygringo wrote: post #300

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.

We're only talking about music though. You can always literally just record the audio stream if you want. Or do that from free Spotify. Nothing's getting "locked" anywhere when it's just a simple stereo audio signal.

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

#342

Post by lurk2 »

weinzierl wrote: post #261
Salgat wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Unlikely anyone in Russia or China would care to offer a service primarily to the benefit of the western world.

Russians are huge on the piracy scene and have been for decades, primarily because it’s an effective way for the Russian Federation to thumb their nose at the Americans. China has more than a billion people in it. I’m sure between the two of them there is at least one person that identifies with citizen of the world style liberalism (and, if I could venture to be an optimist, probably a lot more than one).

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

#343

Post by bethekidyouwant »

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.

How is a video file a risk? If you mean a game, then yes, you may get a virus.

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

#344

Post by nathanmills »

input_sh wrote: post #135
gloflo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Music should not be centralized.

Cool, feel free to create a website that does as much as lists track names and let me know how long will you survive before your hosting provider gets flooded with bullshit DMCA notices and shuts you down. I'm not talking about downloading music, I'm not even talking about some custom player for reproducing music, I'm talking about just putting say a list of songs from a playlist as plain text online.

You responded with why it isn't decentralized, not why it shouldn't be decentralized.

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

#345

Post by [deleted] »

basisword wrote: post #338
ricardobeat wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]

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

#346

Post by nathanmills »

chris_wot wrote: post #309

I keep saying this (and I keep getting voted to oblivion) but we really need an alternative to DNS.

Then go ahead and use one. Of course, most projects in this regard try to tackle multiple things (e.g. Tor), including DNS, but there are projects like OpenNIC that take on DNS alone if you prefer. As usual, the mass majority won't adopt these, but they are ready to use for anyone who wants them.

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

#348

Post by protocolture »

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…

>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?

Spotify cancelled my package, and keeps sending me offers to rejoin at twice the price (actually more than that, it was a joint account with my wife, so its like 2.5 times if we were both to start paying again). Every time I listen to spotify without the package I get 3 ads to 1 song. Sometimes 2 ads when its generous.

I would have probably paid my spotify tax on time every month without thinking about it. But now I hate them to pieces.

It seems like my options are:

1. Sign up for a service without the all of music I want to listen to.

2. Sign up for a service thats as scummy as spotify but hasnt quite enshittified yet.

3. Download all the mp3s from my spotify playlists and listen to them locally without the weird payment/advertising apparatus in between.

So far 3 makes the most sense to me.

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

#349

Post by protocolture »

randomNumber7 wrote: post #82
erelong wrote: post #81

[flagged]

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

The torrenting was the only thing they were found to have done wrong, which makes sense.

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

#350

Post by protocolture »

jjice wrote: post #102
erelong wrote: post #81

[flagged]

Like, all together? I'd agree that copyright terms are often much too long, but if you write a book, I'm totally okay with you owning the rights to that and making money off of it for a while.

Yes all together.
Post reply on HN