I wonder could it be done as a plug-in for Popcorn Time

That’s not even remotely comparable to someone creating a publically accessible, friendly UI for reading all those books.

I like this idea too!

that’s my point: no bandwidth or centralised-takedown issues

It’s another thing entirely to offer up a nice frontend for everyone to play files from that torrent… we’re talking about streaming directly from AAs servers

???

You’ve raised –

• Anna’s Archive bearing the server-load (“slurp up their bandwidth”, “the traffic costs will inflate dramatically”)

• Lawyers demanding a centralised takedown

Both of these are based on the idea of a client-server model. Torrents don’t have that model at all. It’s a peer-to-peer model as opposed to a client-server model

Can you link me to the part of that article that says that somehow once you put a torrent file on your server, you can never remove it from your server?

“the lack of a central server that could limit bandwidth”… “The BitTorrent protocol can be used to reduce the server and network impact of distributing large files. Rather than downloading a file from a single source server, the BitTorrent protocol allows users to join a “swarm” of hosts to upload and download from each other simultaneously”… “there is no single point of failure as in one way server-client transfers”… “publishers that value BitTorrent as a cheap alternative to a client-server approach”… “to increase availability and to reduce load on their own servers, especially when dealing with larger files”

Happy to explain this more if you’re still confused.

Once you put a torrent out, you don’t have control of it. The uploader does not have a kill-switch. Torrents are peer-to-peer without a central server.

they can just pull the torrent

They cannot. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent

First off, the traffic costs will inflate dramatically.

Not how torrents work

Second, lawyers would be all over it.

Also not how torrents work

it’s low-profile enough that it doesn’t make waves.

It was covered in many major news outlets.

Cén rogha eile atá acu?

What other choice do they have?