These are beautiful analogies, but I'd appreciate an answer my original question. Your package can explode, these torrents cannot (as far as I am aware). If you want to send me a CD to store at my house, feel free to email me.

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filoleg an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Your package can explode, these torrents cannot (as far as I am aware).

Sure, but what if the scenario was slightly modified, with explicit 100% guarantees regarding rhe package you would receive in the maile:

1. It could only contain either an SSD/hard drive or a usb drive. The storage device has not been tampered with. It was only ever used as a regular storage device out of the box.

2. There is no malware or any malicious executables on the storage device. The only types of data that it could contain would be text/html, structured data/document files (json, csv, office suite files, pdf, etc.), and media files (audio, video, images, etc.). None of those files will exploit any vulnerabilities in the software that opens them (neither through the parser nor anything else)

This makes it nearly a perfect 1:1 analogy to the torrenting scenario, both involving the exact same set of imo the most important dangers.

Which, for me personally, is the fear of ending up with illegal content (CSAM, stolen credit card dumps, etc.) on a storage device in my possession through no fault of my own.

Even if it could be a winnable battle in the end, it would be pretty much over reputationally way before it gets to the legal resolution. Just being accused of having any illegal content of that nature is not something I would want to ever deal with at all.

You gotta realize how it would sound and how you would appear to most uninvolved average people in real life, when your legal defense isn’t even something like statement #1 below, and is way closer to the statement #2:

> “I am not guilty, the accusarions are false, those files were never present on any of my storage devices.”

> “I am not guilty, despite those files being actually present on a storage device in my possession. That’s all due to how torrents inherently work, so, let’s start from the basics…” [and now we gotta explain simplified basics of torrent technology and how it works to the DA, the judge, as well as anyone else observing the trial, and pray they will try to actually understand]

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SecretDreams 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If you end up torrenting very illegal or malicious content, who is responsible? Will it be you, the app creator?

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yoavm 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Assuming you are referring to non-books kind of content: I assume that if this happens to anyone, we'd learn about it and all stop seeding AA's content until they explain what happened and how they're making sure it doesn't happen again. The poor person this happened to will have to explain that this wasn't at all what they thought the software was doing.

As I said in other comments - yes, this requires some kind of trust in the AA project. Personally, I tend to have more trust in this kind of projects than in big corporations, of which people are happily running their binaries without blinking. However, I'm not trying to convince people to trust AA - this project is simply meant for those who want support them.

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SecretDreams 5 hours ago | parent [-]

AA has plenty of illegal and gray content. It's not something laypeople should help to seed. You need to go in eyes wide open and protect yourself if you're participating, which I do not feel you are sufficiently emphasizing in this pitch.

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margalabargala 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah it has a lot of content that violates copyright! That's illegal!

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acessoproibido 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What is an example of illegal content that is distributed by AA?

	▲	throwaway2037 28 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		To clarify your question, are you asking if "AA actually distributes stolen content" (one could argue no, since it is only available by Torrent) or "the stolen contents of AA" (essentially every published book in existance)? Honestly, in these HN discussions, I am disappointed that people seem very casual about mass piracy of copyrighted works.
	▲	an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

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rolymath 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Why do none of you understand that this is for Anna's archives official torrents only?

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throwaway150 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Why do none of you understand that this is for Anna's archives official torrents only?

Because you are on the site where people who have no understanding of the domain or the problem still feel it necessary to share their opinion on things they don't understand.

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ozim 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It is first time I see name of that project. I don't know anyone who is involved in that project. On Wikipedia I see it "shadow library launched by pseudonymous Anna".

"Anna's archives official torrents only" - doesn't put me at ease and it is far far from SETI@Home that was ran by highly regarded university and it wasn't storing any torrents on people hard drive.

Random people should not "just try it out because it is as easy as SETI@Home" - it should be, people who already know the project and would like to contribute but it was a hassle for them to set it up.

	▲	acessoproibido 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Only people who already know and trust AA are going to use it - that is the point of this project