They're just piling on anything they can regardless of reason. A real damage count would be lost sales due to web scraping, but they don't sell anything.
> For example, the organization spent $1,548,693 on upgrades for its hardware infrastructure, and an additional $608,069 for a two-year Cloudflare contract [..] Other costs include the salaries of 34 full-time employees, who were tasked with mitigating the harm caused by the attacks, as well as various other investigation, security, and hardware-related costs.
> “OCLC has incurred damages of $5,333,064 as a direct result of Anna’s Archive’s cyberattacks, but that amount does not fully compensate OCLC for the harm from Anna’s Archive’s wrongful actions. OCLC continues to suffer from harms that cannot be remedied by monetary damages.”
Is web scraping now considered a cyberattack? Was it eating their bandwidth even if it was served through Cloudflare? LOL.
>> and an additional $608,069 for a two-year Cloudflare contract
> Was it eating their bandwidth even if it was served through Cloudflare? LOL.
On the paid plans, I think Cloudflare charges for bandwidth. Also, you still need to pay for bandwidth from the origin to Cloudflare. And if it's scraping, it's likely to be a lot of cache misses that need to go to the origin.
> Is web scraping now considered a cyberattack?
I've run sites that attract scraping... Aggressive scapers can effectively DoS a server; and if they're trying to get around rate limits, that can look like a DDoS.
This is the most ridiculous lawsuit ever. How is scrapping publicly available data "hacking"? How is less than 2TB of total bandwidth amount to millions of dollars of damage? Something is off here. Maybe there is some other motivation behind this, like drawing some legal representative of Anna's archive out? It makes no sense otherwise. Considering that high ranking officers of OCLC (taking a look over their executives in [0]) seem deeply intertwined with the book industry, it makes sense that it is used as a proxy for other types of interests.
I feel obligated to say my usual "IP is at this point doing more harm than good" spiel here but don't have the time budget to argue it with people today
Definitely recommend everyone interested to listen to rms's talk "Copyright vs Community". It changed the way I thought about it some 15 years ago. It's only got worse since, but it seems more people are coming to the same conclusion. Maybe we can do something about it.
rms suggests dialling back copyright rather than completely abolishing it: 10 years from date of publication. Of course he doesn't believe in copyright for software at all, but that's another matter.
The funny thing is the way these greedy assholes in the copyright industry are behaving is just making it worse for them. It's driving people to places like z-library because essentially everything is in copyright. A child has just been born who won't ever see a work that was published 50 years ago go out of copyright. It's insane. With sensible copyright lengths we wouldn't need z-library.
I've been trying to convince people of this for years. The problem is from my view, that people have the idea of IP being some sort of the American Dream ingrained in their heads that they can't even reason about anything else.
I can respect that. I've been commenting on the insanity of intellectual property and calling for its abolishment for years. Now I'm thinking about writing an article on it with my opinions so I can just point to it instead of arguing the same points over and over again.
Expressing views on HN doesn't directly change anything but there's some benefits. For example, over years it's become clear to me that I'm not alone in thinking this system is screwed up. Every time I expressed some "unhinged" opinions, as some people here called them, it felt like going against the status quo, against all odds. Inevitably though, somebody else would show up and show me that I'm not insane, in fact I'm not even being radical enough.
IP-intensive industries contribute 41% of the US GDP and employ 44% of the US workforce [1]. If you abolished IP all of that would go away. How would you replace that? I'm not a fan of IP either but I think it's pretty hard to escape that reality. Big companies like NVIDIA (3T market cap) are almost 100% IP.
IP is more-or-less central to the US's economic and security strategy. Without it, the country loses a huge amount of power and influence in the world.
What a ridiculous claim. They call computer hardware and salaries damage.
I want a competent judge to make sure that these are not damages and I wish that Anna’s Archive continues to operate in sensible jurisdiction for the foreseeable future.
They mean "damages" in a legal sense, not in a "broken" sense. Damages in tort law are the amount intended to make the claimant whole -- that is, to reimburse expenses incurred to protect legal rights, compensate for lost revenue, or to restore the status quo ante.
Article says nobody is responding as defendant except one individual who has filed a motion to dismiss based on being misidentified. I don’t know the status of that motion though.
"Whether we’re supporting advancements on the leading edge of science or helping children build a strong learning foundation, shared knowledge is the common thread". (source: https://www.oclc.org/en/about.html)
Well, now it's shared on a torrent, but I guess for them that was "over shared" lol.
Also, they are a library but spent 5 million on cyber defense... seriously??
"Breakthroughs depend on access to knowledge. Together, member institutions, individual librarians, partners, and staff believe in that mission to share knowledge. And we believe that, together, we can do more.
At this point, we need a service that "offers" an 8-bay (with 12TB? 14TB? drives) full with the whole ~80TB Anna's Archive. It's essentially all of human knowledge and to be frank it belongs to no one - rather...everyone.
People can store this at their house, keep it offline. Just to have these seeds of knowledge everywhere.
...I suppose LLM's trained on this data, essentially their model weights and tokenization are a much more efficient way of storing and condensing this 80TB archive?
High-transfer users can easily pay tens of thousands a month to a CDN. And not even that high an amount of transfer, even. Not like Steam or someone like that.
Cloudflare also offers other services and likes to bundle them with their enterprise accounts. They don’t really compete on transfer costs vs other decent CDNs. They prefer you’re using lots of their stuff than just watching the meter every month. They may have been using other services, too.
The Internet Archive is up against the same issues. Anna Archive is next in line, showing what happens when big corporations go after anything or anyone that threatens their money.
Looks like the case is defaulted against the "Anna's Archive" entity, but still ongoing against other defendants, including Maria who has responded with some pretty damned decent filings asserting (fairly correctly as I can see) that the Complaint fails to properly state a claim against them. I don't see a ruling granting Maria's Motion to Dismiss, so that's still in the future.
Anyone know the particulars of (federal) legal service by email?
I've only ever used the Sheriff for service, by hand to the person or their agent.
[+] [-] ASalazarMX|1 year ago|reply
> For example, the organization spent $1,548,693 on upgrades for its hardware infrastructure, and an additional $608,069 for a two-year Cloudflare contract [..] Other costs include the salaries of 34 full-time employees, who were tasked with mitigating the harm caused by the attacks, as well as various other investigation, security, and hardware-related costs.
> “OCLC has incurred damages of $5,333,064 as a direct result of Anna’s Archive’s cyberattacks, but that amount does not fully compensate OCLC for the harm from Anna’s Archive’s wrongful actions. OCLC continues to suffer from harms that cannot be remedied by monetary damages.”
Is web scraping now considered a cyberattack? Was it eating their bandwidth even if it was served through Cloudflare? LOL.
[+] [-] bawolff|1 year ago|reply
We've been tobagonning down the slippery slope of "cyber" damages for a long time now.
[+] [-] odo1242|1 year ago|reply
This is also why having a default judgement delivered against you for failing to show up generally isn't great.
[+] [-] throwaway81523|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] toast0|1 year ago|reply
> Was it eating their bandwidth even if it was served through Cloudflare? LOL.
On the paid plans, I think Cloudflare charges for bandwidth. Also, you still need to pay for bandwidth from the origin to Cloudflare. And if it's scraping, it's likely to be a lot of cache misses that need to go to the origin.
> Is web scraping now considered a cyberattack?
I've run sites that attract scraping... Aggressive scapers can effectively DoS a server; and if they're trying to get around rate limits, that can look like a DDoS.
[+] [-] gmuslera|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] freehorse|1 year ago|reply
[0] https://www.oclc.org/en/about/leadership.html?cmpcat=md_ab&c...
[+] [-] viking1066|1 year ago|reply
If only someone had told the person that may have caused the death of Aaron Schwarz!!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Ortiz
[+] [-] gmerc|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] advael|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] globular-toast|1 year ago|reply
rms suggests dialling back copyright rather than completely abolishing it: 10 years from date of publication. Of course he doesn't believe in copyright for software at all, but that's another matter.
The funny thing is the way these greedy assholes in the copyright industry are behaving is just making it worse for them. It's driving people to places like z-library because essentially everything is in copyright. A child has just been born who won't ever see a work that was published 50 years ago go out of copyright. It's insane. With sensible copyright lengths we wouldn't need z-library.
[+] [-] NuSkooler|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] matheusmoreira|1 year ago|reply
Expressing views on HN doesn't directly change anything but there's some benefits. For example, over years it's become clear to me that I'm not alone in thinking this system is screwed up. Every time I expressed some "unhinged" opinions, as some people here called them, it felt like going against the status quo, against all odds. Inevitably though, somebody else would show up and show me that I'm not insane, in fact I'm not even being radical enough.
[+] [-] data_maan|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] noman-land|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] chongli|1 year ago|reply
IP is more-or-less central to the US's economic and security strategy. Without it, the country loses a huge amount of power and influence in the world.
[1] https://www.uspto.gov/ip-policy/economic-research/intellectu...
[+] [-] lynguist|1 year ago|reply
I want a competent judge to make sure that these are not damages and I wish that Anna’s Archive continues to operate in sensible jurisdiction for the foreseeable future.
If I had the means I would donate to them.
[+] [-] otterley|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] teractiveodular|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tehwebguy|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] pornel|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] squigz|1 year ago|reply
https://annas-archive.gs/donate
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] data_maan|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] data_maan|1 year ago|reply
Well, now it's shared on a torrent, but I guess for them that was "over shared" lol.
Also, they are a library but spent 5 million on cyber defense... seriously??
[+] [-] anadem|1 year ago|reply
"Breakthroughs depend on access to knowledge. Together, member institutions, individual librarians, partners, and staff believe in that mission to share knowledge. And we believe that, together, we can do more.
Because what is known must be shared."
[+] [-] aftbit|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] catlikesshrimp|1 year ago|reply
Sharing is the best thing that can happen to knowledge. It is great that gatekeepers lose money over this.
However, the blame of the loss might burden oclc, which might have been doing a positive job.
https://www.oclc.org/en/about.html
[+] [-] helloworld42024|1 year ago|reply
People can store this at their house, keep it offline. Just to have these seeds of knowledge everywhere.
...I suppose LLM's trained on this data, essentially their model weights and tokenization are a much more efficient way of storing and condensing this 80TB archive?
[+] [-] lupire|1 year ago|reply
OCLC should be sending Anna flowers.
This smells like an embezzlement scam from an imsider at OCLC.
[+] [-] langsoul-com|1 year ago|reply
What exactly are they paying for? Surely
[+] [-] vundercind|1 year ago|reply
Cloudflare also offers other services and likes to bundle them with their enterprise accounts. They don’t really compete on transfer costs vs other decent CDNs. They prefer you’re using lots of their stuff than just watching the meter every month. They may have been using other services, too.
[+] [-] antistatusquo|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] qingcharles|1 year ago|reply
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68157923/oclc-online-co...
[+] [-] qingcharles|1 year ago|reply
Anyone know the particulars of (federal) legal service by email?
I've only ever used the Sheriff for service, by hand to the person or their agent.
[+] [-] squigz|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] vlark|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] antistatusquo|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] cauefcr|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] account42|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]