You can help Anna's Archive by seeding torrents

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Project scope and goals

  • Archive mirrors and aggregates datasets from LibGen, Sci-Hub, Z-Library, Internet Archive CDL, DuXiu, etc., totaling ~500 TB (tens of millions of books and 100M+ papers).
  • Torrent sets are positioned as infrastructure for full mirrors and long‑term redundancy, not for grabbing individual titles.
  • Maintainer notes more unique material (hundreds of TB of books/magazines) will be added, increasing preservation needs.

Legal risk, jurisdictions, and copyright

  • Multiple comments ask about legally safer jurisdictions for seeding. Suggestions include Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Vietnam, some African countries, and to a lesser extent Sweden and Turkey; others warn that large‑scale activity can still draw enforcement.
  • Distinction is drawn between countries that tolerate individual seeding vs. prosecuting operators of services.
  • Some argue current copyright law would undermine large public libraries if applied literally; others respond that modern libraries exist precisely because law carved out exceptions.
  • Several people seek explicit legal guidance; a dedicated copyright page exists on the archive site, but details are not discussed in the thread. Legality of seeding specific torrents in the US remains unclear.

How to contribute storage and bandwidth

  • You don’t need 500 TB locally. Torrents are chunked; clients can:
    • Download and seed only selected torrents or subsets of files.
    • Limit total storage, with the site generating a matching torrent list.
  • Intermittent seeding (e.g., a few hours per week) is considered still useful.
  • Suggestions include using old laptops, low‑power mini‑PCs, ARM boards with Transmission, and QoS rules to avoid clogging home networks.

VPNs, seedboxes, and payment

  • Many recommend always‑on VPNs for privacy and to avoid DMCA notices, with split tunneling or app‑specific routing for torrents.
  • Seedboxes and VPSes bought via cryptocurrency or prepaid methods are frequently suggested; some hosts advertise “DMCA‑ignore” but may still act on abuse reports, prompting VPN‑inside‑VPS setups.
  • Lists of crypto‑friendly VPS/seedbox providers are shared; trade‑off is higher risk of termination.

Preservation vs. distribution and ethics

  • Some question whether “preservation” is a pretext for mass distribution, noting that national libraries already preserve works; others counter that institutional preservation doesn’t equate to public access, especially for paywalled or controlled collections.
  • There is tension between viewing this as vital cultural/knowledge preservation and as large‑scale copyright infringement with real legal risk.

Protocol and infrastructure debates

  • Several ask why not use IPFS. Responses:
    • At the archive’s scale, BitTorrent is currently more stable, mature, and user‑friendly for preservation.
    • IPFS is seen as promising but with unreliable tooling and UX at large sizes; some large archives explore newer IPFS‑inspired systems (e.g., Iroh).
  • One contributor outlines research directions for a future protocol combining ideas from HTTP, BitTorrent, and IPFS: smarter chunking/deduplication, deterministic “online” archives, scalable manifests, better DHT usage, and first‑class mobile/browser peers.

Privacy, Cloudflare, and centralization

  • Concern is raised about Cloudflare’s JavaScript challenges potentially deanonymizing visitors.
  • The project indicates willingness to replace Cloudflare if an equivalent self‑hosted CAPTCHA solution is contributed.
  • Some argue that once data is fully mirrored via torrents, direct web access becomes less critical for privacy‑sensitive users.

Enforcement and doxxing concerns

  • A comment alleges the main operator may have been partially deanonymized via a civil lawsuit referencing a GitHub account; others link to coverage and discuss potential surveillance and future indictments.
  • This is cited as an additional reason to decentralize the archive aggressively.
  • Historical examples (e.g., prosecutions over academic scraping) are invoked to illustrate how harshly authorities can respond, even to activity some see as socially beneficial.