Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team

I don't think I follow. There's no recommendation engine in AA, right? Do you download a bunch of books from AA, read them, then if you happened to like one enough, you will buy it from a local bookstore?

I'm exactly the same. I tend to get the first book of any series that interests me and read a third before I decide whether to buy it or not. I do buy about 3-4 books a month (mostly epub drm free preferred) plus about 10 european graphic novels (paper books only) a month so I'm a heavy consumer I think.

> Am I an exception?

Yes, I think you're an exception, sorry.

We will never have real data on this. But simply on its face, I find it extremely hard to believe that most consumers have a strong enough moral compass to go out of their way to buy something they already have access to. Maybe they will for a tiny handful of special books that they want hard copies of, or authors they really like, but not for most media they consume.

This type of system also becomes a popularity contest for creators; you are supporting the people you like as opposed to whose work you want to read. If an author says something you disagree with, it's easy to just read their work without paying them. I'm not against consumer boycotts, but it should generally come with a sacrifice on both sides--for consumers, that means missing out on the product or service.

You are free to feel however you want about this. I can certainly see the immense societal value of making things accessible to more people. But I flat out don't believe the "piracy doesn't lead to lost sales" shtick, of course it does.

Can you recommend some of the obscure stuff?

Satoshi's pride:

* ability to fund shadow libraries without fear of censorship

* lists with a single item still count as lists

aaronsw would be proud, too.

Perhaps he could spare a few coins, chump change to him to help out.

I'm surprised i2p torrents are still not popular enough to be offered as an option by sites like this.

I'd assume there are many people who don't help out purely because of legal fears, something i2p could help with.

yeah, that's a really unfortunate shoutout that's going to be brought up in court.

Why? They acquired books, that’s what they do

I am curious how they’re funded. How they are able to stay online. Surely there must be people, governments etc with deep pockets that would want to take them down?

> the last good things

Last but not least?

It is not humorous or strange because that formulation omits authors.

How many authors who write the books in pro Anna's archive are happy about it?

I personally am pro Anna's archive (and sci-hub, etc) because I believe it benefits society to have better read citizens. That said, I have some misgivings, because under our current system, there are issues with law and remuneration.

What about writers?

There was a pretty major UI update in the past 2-5 days-ish.

Apologies for the minor grumble, but on mobile I used to be able to browse search results much more effectively; the new design only fits ~4-5 results on a screen.

This site is down or inaccessible to me. What is in it and why is it useful?

When accessing from Belgium the link is blocked by Cloudflare:

Error HTTP 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons

In response to a legal order, Cloudflare has taken steps to limit access to this website through Cloudflare's pass-through security and CDN services within Belgium

The two behind Z-Library were arrested in late 2022.

Not sure like between books and AI

Pretty sure no one wants AI slop stored away forever even though that's the unavoidable future

In the future, the curation function of libraries will become even more important. Libraries — even bookstores —, both physical and online, will probably use as competitive advantage their capacity to separate the wheat from the chaff. There's no value to a place where AI slop is prevalent.

It doesn't look like they accept from anything that strikes me as being remotely anonymous, which is surprising.

https://annas-archive.org/donate

I'll also say that when too much money starts becoming a part of this, trouble will increase dramatically. I realize this sort of endeavor costs a lot of time and money, but it's a line we should probably be aware of.

https://annas-archive.org/datasets

libgen is still there

Kind of... the fact that they have the actual data behind a "soft" paywall (waiting times and terribly slow transfers otherwise) makes me a bit skeptic of their "goodwill".

Right? I mean I love what they're doing. But at the same time please, stop claiming to be holy angels trying to build an archive for historical purposes. You're a terrific piracy site, period.

It's an interesting peek into their milieu. For those in the club, the statement might seem self-evident.

If efforts like this are to be sustainable in any lasting way, participants need to be cooperative, not parasitic. I agree with the Anna's Archive team, it serves noone to have one of these players in the space hoarding their own collections and not sharing them to other archiving projects, it make the collection extremely vulnerable and at risk of becoming lost knowledge as time goes on.

Why use them over annas archive?

The Internet has been redesigned. It's just not been redesigned with your interests in mind and at least some of the "attacks" are features to the right people.

The precursor to BitCoin was this interesting project called HashCash. It was built to combat email spam and forced the sender to spend compute solving a moderate hash and put it in the header. The person who receives the email can prove easily if the sender "paid" the cost.

There are, but they each have their tradeoffs.

Proof of work and micropayments (eg. Xanadu or Internet Mail 2000) schemes solve spamming and LLM scraping, but are more expensive or more CPU-intensive.

P2P systems like FreeNet too, but they are harder to use and more storage intensive and make it easier to spy on individual users.

Tor solves UK-like surveillance laws but it's slower and makes it easier to spam.

Decentralization and interoperability, including the TCP routing protocols give the ability for the network to grow freely, but makes those kind of attacks easier.

The easiest way to mitigate those problem will be to decrease the openness and centralize more. It might lead to even worse things that DDOS.

RFC-3514 [1] proposed an effective solution against attacks.

So see, there are initiatives, but people treat it as a joke, maybe because of when it was released.

[1] https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3514.txt

Out of curiosity, do you see the archive in question as being part of the problem or that it needs protection from the issues you raise?

Go right ahead

because they will come after new design? how do you not see this?

I'll start the wiki

Redesigned like how?

I fully agree. It's difficult though because I genuinely believe that the solution space overlaps with cryptography, which is quickly discounted as viable option because it is now laden with negative connotations.

Because the vast majority of people don't want this, and not for some nefariuos reason or because they're stupid, but because we don't want to enable blatant fraud and abuse, among other things.

(Not to mention the astronomical technical work it would be; you can't just replace "The Entire Internet")

the problem is that anybody who does that work will be targeted very quickly by the people in power.

even if it's decentralised, it'll be banned one way or another and you'll be hunted down.

"Be the change you want to see in the world"

Not that scary. Click it.

They just announced that they're still in the fight.

I think you'll be happy if you do

They do: https://xcancel.com/vxunderground/status/1888019174133276846, https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/9/23788741/sarah-silverman-o...

The tweet only names Meta, but it would be very surprising if OpenAI didn't do the same thing.

They do, don't they? I think OpenAI uses libgen.

Meta managed to get into a private ebook torrent tracker called Bibliotik a few years ago to use for training Llama and the resulting publicity essentially killed the tracker.

I share your concern for the livelihood of authors (and your skepticism regarding the naiveté that often surrounds pro-piracy rhetoric), but I don't think that's fair to the question here. Unlike in the case of music or film, most users are not just trying to get the latest NY Times best-selling novel. The percent of books made accessible through these services that are tied to an author's income through consumer sales is negligible. Most specialist literature, whether in the natural sciences or the humanities, is priced under the assumption that university libraries are the ones making the purchase, often more or less automatically. Yet even and perhaps especially in the US (I know nothing of the library culture in certain sanctioned countries), it's increasingly rare that university libraries have open stacks for non-students and there are incredibly few public libraries that actually provide access to scholarly works, past or present -- New York Public Library and the Library of Congress in DC are the ones I've used personally, but I'm sure there are a handful of others.

Moreover, however many countless AI companies now buying and pulping copies of every book in existence seems to be really changing the used book market. Prices are going up dramatically and before this year it was very rare to not find a single copy in the world of whatever old book one desired.

As someone who spends a disproportionate amount on books and shares your concern for not making life even more difficult for authors, these services going away would be a tremendous regression.

Don't forget the video piracy thread had a lot of justification to the effect of 'the people that work on these shows/movies don't get paid enough anyways, so it's ok for me to pirate'. Wait, so you think they should get paid more for their work, this what they do is worth being paid for, just not by you? Weirdest flex.

I'm sorry you feel that way and it's understandable to be frustrated by them allowing piracy of something you've worked so long on.

That being said, do you know if their offering of your material has had a significant impact on your revenue or is it more the principal of the matter?

This strikes me as a bit ironic, if you're serious, as you list your current work as covering the entirety of the Beatles discography. Are you paying them for the rights?

I bought your book. I would never have discovered your book if it wasn't for a shadow library (not Anna's). The topic is rather niche and there is no marketing to speak of.

How do you expect people to find your book?

Also, but too late now, if I had known your attitude, I'd not have bought your book.

I wonder if the people who downloaded it for free (has anyone actually done so?) would have ever paid for it.

I think they shouldn’t publish books which are fairly new. Hurts the authors…

Cultures are created to protect power structures. Culture is the enforcer of authority. Culture distorts principles in order to defend the authority of evil. Culture must convince you that it is not wrong when law subjugates your worth and destroys your freedom. Culture convinces people of this by perverting the concept of morality. Morality is liberty. Immorality is evil. The exercise and defense of freedom are moral. The destruction of freedom is immoral. This is the pure truth of morality. Prudence is the proper application of principle. Imprudence is foolishness. Prudence is not morality. It is not immoral to kick a heavy stone with your bare foot, but it would probably be foolish. Prudence is a question of applying the principles and wisdom you have gathered in your life to achieve the goals you have for yourself. This is made possible by liberty. Without liberty, prudence is meaningless. Morality must come before prudence. The great lie of culture is that authority is not bound by morality, and that authority can enforce its own prudence upon you. The great lie of culture is that you are worth less than law. Cultures teach that intentions of prudence can be enforced by law. In this fashion they gain excuse to control the lives of people. In order for people to learn, grow, and find happiness, people must be free to test their understanding of principles. With freedom, they can do this by a process of faith, trial and error. In this fashion children grow from immaturity to maturity. In this fashion human beings gain wisdom. Cultures are agents of evil. The objective of evil is the damnation of your ability to grow strong in wisdom. The objective of evil is the destruction of your worth. In order to gain control over you, culture spreads the lie that authority is not bound by morality. It teaches that authority can destroy freedom at will, and claims prudence as the reason you should willingly submit. In the name of defending you, culture claims that the destruction of freedom is morality. Cultures pretend that evil is good and that good is evil. Prudence can be found all around you. It is found in the choices you make every day. Even when a mistake is made, you learn prudence. Prudence cannot be enforced. To enforce prudence is law. Law is lie. Without the freedom to choose, you cannot learn prudence. You cannot be happy. Morality can be found all around you. Wherever you find it, you will find joy. Wherever you find immorality, you will find misery. Culture enforces authority by destroying freedom with law. This is immorality. - The End of all Evil, Jeremy Locke

You have invested in an idea that has been created by power structures through culture, that you are getting harmed by someone else's freedom. The people that will/want to support your work will do so out of a desire to do so, not because law says its right.

Many people are deceived that law breakers are immoral and harmful to society, but I don't think that's the case. The people that care to much about copyright are too invested in demanding a return for their efforts. What ever happens to the priority of making the world a better place first and foremost and having faith that you will be compensated in some fashion for your efforts?

Your comment seems like a non sequitur to me. Whether something is a "non-profit" has nothing to do with whether it receives or spends money. (See, e.g. the American Red Cross's ~$4B/yr budget.) It's about what it does with the money it has.

Obviously, since Anna's Archive is breaking the law, it can't conform itself to the normal legal/regulatory system that governs non-profit organizations. It can certainly still claim to be acting in the spirit of a non-profit, and it's up to you to decide whether you trust that claim. Nobody's forcing you to give them money.

Given the amount of hosting and storage needed to sustain this project. Nobody is getting rich off of donations. Not to mention the lifestyle tradeoffs that innevitably come with international fugitive status do not lend themselves to a very comfortable life.

The usage of crypto is entirely one of necessity, as controling information and knowledge is something powerful people have clear stakes in. Many countries weild their financial systems to hold or acquire power. Information and Knowledge is one form of such power.

Everything points to the Anna's Archive team being passionate ideologues as opposed to some criminal enterprise focused on profit motives.

illegal doesn't at all have to mean immoral or particularly wrong either. Laws are complex constructions, often created for decidedly hypocritical reasons of benefitting some at the expense of others.

Thus, Who gives a shit if they're taking money from those who voluntarily subscribe. They still offer an absolutely incredible free service to who knows how many people who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford so much access to so much free information.

Given the behavior of the pro-copyright business interests and legal bodies of the world, and the outright hypocrisy of openly creating one set of rules on content piracy for certain corporations while applying another, harsher rule system for those who aren't so nicely connected, smug moralizing about something like Annas Archive has little grounding.

And aside from picking random crap out of your ass for smearing arbitrarily, what shred of evidence do you have of anyone there laundering crypto, and how?