Anna’s Archive should be your first stop if you want a PDF without paying. Being an occasional periphery demographic for science papers and university presses, i have no qualms helping myself to a PDF, and the academics who write them almost never take issue with my doing so: while they write to advance their careers, whether i pay rent-seekers like Elsevier has a negligible impact on their finances.
Anna lives in the shadows. Some say she is just a character, a mask behind whom a bunch of anonymous anarchists conceal their face, but i know better, Anna is real and she is my friend.
The premise, the promise of the Internet Archive is to be in the spotlight. It is to be Not Anna’s Archive. It is to be run by Brewster Kahle and Jason Scott parading around showing off their fancy top hats for the camera.
If you search itch.io on the Internet Archive, you will find hundreds of results, such as one named itch.io horror game collection vol 11, credited to the author named these games belong to their creators. Only inspecting the list of files will tell you its contents.
Itch.io is the most respected indie game marketplace: they do not pull the plug on creators easily, they take a reasonable cut from sales, they have a good track record of paying their dues, they have a solid infrastructure, and they do not rock the boat trying to squeeze more money. It’s not a VC-funded startup that tries to satisfy investors next quarter, it’s an honest business left on autopilot owned by just one guy, who uses the site himself to host his games.
Many games on offer are pay-what-you-want, without a minimum price: you can acquire them for free if you wish.
Why does the Internet archive offer a way to bypass that optional payment gate? Itch.io is at no risk of disappearing soon. Itch.io is not a slimy middleman like Elsevier.
And Itch.io is but a random example.
The Internet Archive also offers a lot of audio software. Let’s take the case of Reason ReFills: they are patch and sample packs for use with the DAW Reason. They offer many ReFills to download that are often a good 15 years old—and that are still being sold. They are audio samples: they do not lose their commercial value after 15 years. Those products are generally the work of tiny teams (if not of a single person), and while they can be surprisingly expensive, their sales are rarely impressive, as they are often pirated. That fact is built into the price.
Another thing the Internet Archive collects is Akai sample CDs. Those are very different from Reason Refills: they are physical CDs that have been out of print for decades. It is impossible to acquire them in a way that pays their creators anymore. They are historically significant—Akai samplers are one of the defining sounds of 90’s music.
A few days ago, the Internet Archive lost its appeal against Hachette, due to their uncontrolled digital lending scheme during the pandemic, that was more akin to letting anyone grab the PDF of any recent book on-demand.
”The Internet Archive is a library engaging in digital preservation”, people often say, expecting them to receive special treatment, when their behavior is no different from Anna’s Archive, which knows to keep to the shadows.
The moral side is between you and your conscience. I think you should never pay for a science paper under any circumstances. You probably shouldn’t pay for media that’s out of print. You should pay for your music software if you make music seriously, but random kids pirating stuff is just a fact of life the industry takes for granted. You should absolutely pay the random indie game developer who’s still offering her game for sale unless you’re truly destitute.
But what’s important is the legal side, which is unconcerned with morality: the Internet Archive is constantly flying so close to the sun, it’s basically an expedition to the stars at this point. The Wayback Machine is core Internet infrastructure, requiring constant funding, infrastructure we could never afford to lose.
The parent organization recklessly jeopardizes the Wayback Machine, and its expansive collection of out-of-print media, by enmeshing its finances to a generic piracy site.
I’m not here to lecture anyone about the morality of copyright. What’s indefensible is their legal strategy.