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 public library. And they want to potentially jeopardize that to... release a bunch of music tracks, that are just entertainment and mostly widely available on YouTube already anyways? Major misstep.
Like, even if the same people are proud of scraping all these tracks and want to release them... at least do it under the name of a totally separate project? A separate domain, or just describe it and post the torrents somewhere else? Don't tie it to the AA site or identity. Don't tie things together when it creates no more benefit but does create more risk.
Trying to shut down a site by going after their domain names will always be a losing battle. As long as the link on their Wikipedia article keeps being updated, it'll remain easy to access. And it would be a pretty shocking attack on free speech if a U.S. court tried to order the Wikimedia Foundation to take that down; I suspect the public response would be similar to when the movie industry tried to get the AACS encryption key taken down in the 2000s.
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 CarPlay support and everything. A few clicks and I'm jamming and scrobbling to MusicBrainz. My next goal is to have a local LLM generate smart playlists. Everyone who wants off Spotify, or the other streaming music giants should do this.
> 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.
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.
1) It was in their name rather than a disconnected splinter group or name, and
2) They went off half cocked releasing the analysis and metadata with no music.
They should have held silent until the entirety of the music collection was ready to release, and it should have been a 'new' seemingly unaffiliated group.
Either the leaders' egos have inflated too big, or someone is trying to hurt the project by making intentional strategic errors. I don't see any good reason to release only metadata, cover art, and analysis in a blog post, and little or no music, under your group's name, unless you want a massive ego stroke!
For shame, and highly unprofessional, like modern UI devs who think an interface should change more often than once a decade (STOP BREAKING VISUO-MUSCLE MEMORY YOU TWITS! INTERFACES ARE THE HUMAN API!)...
> the operators of the site remain unidentified. The judgment [...] orders Anna’s Archive to file a compliance report within ten business days, under penalty of perjury, that includes valid contact information for the site and its managing agents
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.
451 comments
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 public library. And they want to potentially jeopardize that to... release a bunch of music tracks, that are just entertainment and mostly widely available on YouTube already anyways? Major misstep.
Like, even if the same people are proud of scraping all these tracks and want to release them... at least do it under the name of a totally separate project? A separate domain, or just describe it and post the torrents somewhere else? Don't tie it to the AA site or identity. Don't tie things together when it creates no more benefit but does create more risk.
> 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.
[0] https://torrentfreak.com/spotifys-beta-used-pirate-mp3-files...
1) It was in their name rather than a disconnected splinter group or name, and
2) They went off half cocked releasing the analysis and metadata with no music.
They should have held silent until the entirety of the music collection was ready to release, and it should have been a 'new' seemingly unaffiliated group.
Either the leaders' egos have inflated too big, or someone is trying to hurt the project by making intentional strategic errors. I don't see any good reason to release only metadata, cover art, and analysis in a blog post, and little or no music, under your group's name, unless you want a massive ego stroke!
For shame, and highly unprofessional, like modern UI devs who think an interface should change more often than once a decade (STOP BREAKING VISUO-MUSCLE MEMORY YOU TWITS! INTERFACES ARE THE HUMAN API!)...
> the operators of the site remain unidentified. The judgment [...] orders Anna’s Archive to file a compliance report within ten business days, under penalty of perjury, that includes valid contact information for the site and its managing agents
BTW, you can donate and get faster downloads: https://annas-archive.gl/donate
Just donated in honor of this. Up yours spotify!