Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Scope of the bounty / technical approach

  • Anna’s Archive offers up to $200k for a full Google Books (or similar) dump, plus other bounties (e.g., Internet Archive PDFs, Library of Congress MARC, full text versions).
  • Commenters outline a high-level approach:
    • Discover how Google Books exposes page fragments and iteratively fetch contiguous pages.
    • Bypass bot detection and rate limiting via sophisticated browser automation or purchased “clean” identities.
  • Several note this is technically feasible but highly inconvenient at scale, which is precisely why the bounty is large.

Legal and personal risk

  • Many argue exfiltrating Google’s internal corpus would likely move from civil copyright infringement into criminal territory.
  • Risks include corporate lawsuits, criminal charges, and pursuit of estates after death; some doubt an employee would do it “just for money.”
  • There is skepticism that random employees have direct, bulk access to the full dataset or could copy petabytes without detection.

Funding and role of Anna’s Archive

  • People question how Anna’s Archive funds six-figure bounties; answers in the thread:
    • Paid fast-access memberships.
    • High-priced, high-speed access for AI companies and data brokers, reportedly mostly non‑US firms.
  • Anna’s Archive is described as an aggregator of many shadow libraries (LibGen, Z-Lib, etc.), now functioning as a primary “source” for many.

Piracy, copyright, and creator compensation

  • Strong support from users in countries with limited legal access or non-convertible currencies; they credit AA/Z‑Lib with enabling their education.
  • Others stress that piracy can hurt authors’ income and that many writers already struggle; they argue for buying when possible or using piracy as a “preview.”
  • Multiple threads debate:
    • Excessive copyright duration vs. authors’ rights.
    • Libraries vs. digital licensing and recent legal defeats for the Internet Archive.
    • Micropayments or subscription models vs. outright piracy.

AI, training data, and hypocrisy claims

  • Discussion highlights that many AI labs (especially outside the US) pay AA for training access.
  • Some note a perceived HN inconsistency: anger at LLM training on copyrighted works vs. enthusiasm for outright distribution of pirated books.
  • Others justify the difference by framing piracy as helping individuals access knowledge, while AI training is framed as enriching large corporations.