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.

They are copyrighted material just the same

Assumes the copyright holder is looking at the peer list for these torrent. (Books) Which I doubt.

It's not the copyright holder doing the work in either case, but a cottage industry of legal trolls.

They are, you just have to turn the pages really fast

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.

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

RIP Aaron 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.

Did you see what Anna's Archive did with Spotify? Seeding their torrents isn't exactly "breaking into a private network", but it is definitely at least showing support for the same kind of large scale data theft / DRM breaking. Which might put a target on your back, should the US govt want to make an example out of you.

> data theft

Did they delete the data that they copied without permission?

No need to be snarky, I know there's a difference of opinions about ownership when it comes to data. That's why I also wrote "DRM breaking" as an alternative term.

Would you say "hackers broke into the NHS and copied patient data without permission" or would you simply say they "stole" it?

> That's why I also wrote "DRM breaking" as an alternative term.

Except that there's nothing bad about breaking DRM, even when respecting copyright. If anything DRM interferes with how copyright is supposed to work by being an obstacle to fair use.

> Would you say "hackers broke into the NHS and copied patient data without permission" or would you simply say they "stole" it?

It's significantly more reasonable to use "stole" and "theft" for getting your hands on private data, especially when breaking in to get to it. (Preemptive note, breaking DRM is not breaking in, it happens on your own devices.)

Did I say or imply that breaking DRM was bad? It is a neutral description of what was done.

> It's significantly more reasonable to use "stole" and "theft" for getting your hands on private data.

Why? GP is arguing that as long as you're not depriving the original owner of access to the data, it can't be called stealing.

> Did I say or imply that breaking DRM was bad? It is a neutral description of what was done.

Well you said it's supposed to be an "alternative term". If it's valid to reword your statement as "seeding Anna's Archive is showing support for large scale DRM breaking", then everyone should be huge huge supporters of them with no downside whatsoever. Which I think is pretty different from your actual argument.

> Why? GP is arguing that as long as you're not depriving the original owner of access to the data, it can't be called stealing.

They didn't say that, they said a much simpler sentence applying to this specific context.

If you consider the context of my original comment (or just read what it says), you'll see that I wasn't implying that breaking DRM was necessarily morally bad, only that it'd make you a target for prosecution in the US. Which is clearly true, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_City_Studios,_Inc._v... and many others.

> everyone should be huge huge supporters of them with no downside whatsoever

The downside being, as I very clearly stated in my original comment, that you might face legal troubles for that, at least if your support entails breaking the law (which seeding torrents does).

Supporting a DRM breaker doesn't put you at risk.

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