Comment by cedws
9 days ago
Nice project. I think it would be worth mentioning the legal implications, it’s illegally sharing content right? Best to run behind a VPN or on a VPS in a country that won’t come after you.
9 days ago
Nice project. I think it would be worth mentioning the legal implications, it’s illegally sharing content right? Best to run behind a VPN or on a VPS in a country that won’t come after you.
I haven't heard about someone ever getting a letter for seeding books, but maybe I'm lucky. In any case, I'll add a notice to the README, thank you for the suggestion.
It would likely happen in Germany, unless you have a VPN. This has been a problem for years when torrenting films. Chasing people with fines has been a lucrative, automated business for years.
films are not books, though.
4 replies →
Well, there's a very famous story of one of the cofounders of reddit facing a million dollar fine and 35 years in prison for just downloading, not seeding, scientific articles. Not entirely the same, but quite related as his motivations were similar to those of Anna's Archive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz
The Aaron Swartz case is a tragedy, but I think this is kind of understating it. He broke into a private network and tried to cover his tracks which is hard to argue isn’t a cyber crime. I don’t think he deserved anywhere near 35 years though.
I think hacker types easily get carried away and forget the optics of what they’re doing. I consider myself lucky the computer mischief I got up to when I was younger never landed me in big trouble. All Swartz needed was a stern reminder, and light sentence to redirect his skills.
8 replies →
There's a lot of interest in this - he had access to all the papers through his own JSTOR account, though he didn't use it; he possibly only got caught by effectively ddosing the site with downloads; his own wiki page suggests he would have faced 50 years in prison but was offered a plea bargain of just six months
RIP Aaron Swartz
A decade ago, it happened regularly, but not sure if they are still doing this now. But the laws haven't changed much since then.