Z-library founders arrested in Argentina

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/two-russian-nationals-charged-running-massive-e-book-piracy-website

by cft • 4 years ago

581 464 4 years ago

justice.gov

elashri• 4 years ago

As alleged, the defendants profited illegally off work they stole

How did they profit? If they even admitted that

Defendants Operated Z-Library, Which Offered Free Download of Copyrighted Works

This is a complete nonsense

jerojero2• 4 years ago

Maybe ads on the platfom? I'm not sure because 1. i use libgen 2. i run adblock.

But it wouldn't be surprising that such a popular platform would have ads. Z-library was a site for pirated e-books, no?

fragmede3• 4 years ago

shh! do you want lingren to get taken down as well? whether accurately or not, the takedowns is attribute to a sudden burst of popularity due to social media sharing of the site.

gnrlst• 4 years ago

I believe they also offered premium plans and for the longest time had a big banner on their site saying something like: "if you know of high risk payment processors, please reach out"

fragmede3• 4 years ago

downloads were limited to a small number per day. if you wanted to download more there was a small fee ($1?). They tracked her Amazon account which had made $14k in purchases over the years.

dmw_ng• 4 years ago

Curious where you heard the detail about Amazon

0xR1CK• 4 years ago

They accepted payment to get around quotas (and probably ran ads). Even if it was a tiny percentage of people who engaged with them this way, or even if they profited at all, they took money in exchange for accessing an illicit resource. That is likely the main reason the teeth have come out to bite.

If anything though this might push that resource to the hands of people who can maintaining the massive library voluntarily and distributed with less ethical/morally-dubious implications.

crtasm• 4 years ago

I don't believe they ran adverts, can anyone confirm?

andai4• 4 years ago

Anyone know what payment processor they used? Did they take USD etc? That's probably how their real identities got exposed.

luckylion2• 4 years ago

Their system was set up to make money, much like iptorrents. Yes, you can use them for free, but they create very low artificial limits to funnel you into paying for premium services.

Your outrage is misplaced, these are not the pirates freeing books, these are parasites making money off of the pirates' work.

jhvkjhk• 4 years ago

They are so young! Does anyone know what will happen to them after the arrestment? I sincerely think they are doing charity.

blakblakarak• 4 years ago

No doubt they'll be chucked in a supermax prison in the arse-end of nowhere for fifty years.

nathancahill• 4 years ago

They'll charge them like Aaron Swartz, where each piece of material is a separate count against them. The years of sentencing and fines will be astronomical.

andsoitis4• 4 years ago

I sincerely think they are doing charity

By limiting downloads (artificial scarcity)?

By charging for pirated works?

inshadows2• 4 years ago

They charge for bandwidth, server cycles and rent.

hd4• 4 years ago

Ah yes, actual hardened dangerous criminals finally facing justice.

drummer• 4 years ago

I couldnt sleep for months with those two running around free knowing they could strike at any time

gustavorg• 4 years ago

I don't want to say in the meantime, but, in the meantime, the pedophile ring that Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell served have not even been cited, ever.

gyog• 4 years ago

True but that includes powerful men in the political sphere such as Biden and Trump. No way the Justice Department is going to touch this, when it implicates their bosses and potential bosses.

voakbasda2• 4 years ago

And that right there is why I support the “no justice, no peace” movement. Long live the revolution.

consumer451• 4 years ago

How is Biden tied to Epstein? I must have missed that one.

markles• 4 years ago

And how many people went to prison over the crash of 2008?

pessimizer2• 4 years ago

A small family bank was the only one prosecuted after the 2008 crisis. ‘Abacus’ tells its tale.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/a-small-china...

blahblah1234567• 4 years ago

They were employed by intelligence agencies, such as CIA, Mossad, and probably FBI too.

It's not a coincidence that the daughter of James Comey-- former Director of FBI-- Maurene Comey was "a lead prosecutor in Ghislaine Maxwell's child sex trafficking case" [1]

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/maurene-comey-james-comey-da...

null_object2• 4 years ago

I know this won't be a popular take on HN, but while I can understand and to a certain extent sympathize with pirating movies (the intentional friction and arbitrary geographic limitations on access imposed by the multinational movie-industry conglomerates), I can't see stealing some poor author's work in the same light.

Sure, people get hung-up about DRM (which can easily be removed by widely-accessible tools), but e-books can be purchased pretty much anywhere in the world. I'm in Sweden but buy most of my e-books from the US. But often buy books directly from publishers (hopefully they, and the author, get a better cut that way).

The fact these people were trying to personally profit (some other HN:ers have documented this), while trying to present themselves as some sort of "information wants to be free" info-warriors doesn't make the whole thing any better.

An enormous amount of work goes into producing a book - through a close friend who works in book-publishing I know a couple of authors who pretty much starve for a year or two to produce their work - and then the editing, typesetting, designing, proof-reading etc is all an enormous and personal investment.

In spite of what people think, authors are not all budding J.K.Rowlings with movie-deals and a couple of billion in the bank, and if we don't buy their books, they won't be able to produce the next one for people to pirate.

sec400• 4 years ago

Imagine the person who cannot afford a book or paper on a particular topic. Should they not have access to the information?

I agree, as always there is nuance, but zlib et al fulfill a need for certain people. In b4 public libraries, they aren't equal around the world, depend on geographic proximity and add latency to the learning process.

null_object2• 4 years ago

Imagine the person who cannot afford a book or paper on a particular topic. Should they not have access to the information?

Imagine I want whatever you do for a living? Should you work for me for free?

gizmo• 4 years ago

Artificial scarcity is still bad. Imagine a world where books are free for everybody, not just for people who live in prosperous areas with good libraries. Would you then advocate making books nonfree thereby placing books out of reach for 2/3rd of the world population, which is more or less where we are today?

trabant004• 4 years ago

Imagine a world where books are free for everybody

I imagine it will go the same way of the other internet content that is free: adds, spam, clickbait, low quality, etc.

FeepingCreature2• 4 years ago

For fiction, I almost exclusively read online serialized fanfiction/webfiction. This is already the world I live in. And I can confirm: it's pretty great.

theCrowing2• 4 years ago

The price spike on comics and graphic novels after the comiXology acquisition by Amazon is over 150%...

JKCalhoun2• 4 years ago

Maybe I'm thinking wrong but I expected digital editions of books to be like $3 or something since there are no printing/shipping costs of the equivalent printed book.

In the old analog world, authors might expect 15% of gross sales. You figure the publisher needed the 85% to cover printing, shipping of the physical book. (Oh, and they should make a profit there too.)

But if you no longer have to deal with pulp, I would naively expect an electronic book to sell for something like 30% of the cost of the physical book — splitting the sale between author and publisher. Presumably both parties still make a comparable profit.

I know I've dropped advertising on the floor in the above discussion and perhaps that counts for a significant cost to the publisher. But at the same time, assuming DRM, a digital book sale should benefit the publisher/author as it is typically non-transferable (unlike the physical books that end up in Little Libraries or Goodwill).

I might add that if eBooks dropped to $0.99 a book, I would be buying them faster than music tracks. Maybe Jobs got two things right. ;-)

Tijdreiziger• 4 years ago

And the app apparently became worse. I wanted to buy some manga on comiXology, but when I downloaded the free trial chapter, it had a bunch of weird borders, which made it unenjoyable to read.

According to the reviews, the previous version of the app was much better, but the current version is just a reskin of the Kindle app.

bentley4• 4 years ago

They removed the DRM‐free download option too.

auggierose2• 4 years ago

Many of the books I am interested in have actually been financed by tax payers, because their authors are professors. These days publishers are not adding much value here, actually they often make high quality publishing harder by terrible off-shore handling of LaTeX.

I've bought quite a few ebooks from the AMS (American Mathematical Society), just to get very angry about the annoying small print on the bottom of EVERY FREAKING PAGE stating that I am the owner of this book. I don't feel bad about replacing these damaged goods with the real deal.

gnramires• 4 years ago

Not only that, but many publishers, specifically scientific ones, seem to get in the way of the natural near-0 marginal cost of digital publishing. Information should be available to all by default, because the value of having it freely available is much more than even what people could be expected to individually all pay for it. In the end, having a million paywalls and restricting information for disadvantaged individuals is not rational (or ethical), or effective for a society.

noodlesUK• 4 years ago

A lot of the usage I see of these sites is in the academic world. Academic publishing is a nightmare (especially on the journal side).

The books are often not available at all in the region you’re in or if they are, they might be priced differently. It’s especially difficult because you’re going to skim a book to see if it has any relevant material, then move on to the next one. Usually university libraries are the only way of doing this, but not everyone has access to one. No individual is going to buy a dozen books nominally priced at >100 usd each just to write a paper for their masters degree or similar

cge• 4 years ago

The books are often not available at all in the region you’re in or if they are, they might be priced differently.

Also, "the region you're in" can even mean the same country as the publisher, or even anywhere in the world. Publishers may be unwilling to sell the books to individuals at all, or may sell them only as part of larger sets with very high prices. They may only be willing to sell hardcover copies, for a premium, even if they do produce softcover ones. It's simply not feasible, in most cases, to purchase the books you need to do scholarly research as an individual. And if you're looking at digital publications, the situation becomes even worse.

I recently had someone tell me that their father, in the US, had been looking, not wanting to ask them, for a copy of a book they had just published a chapter in. The book could only be purchased by individuals as a set of six books, all in hardcover, for around $500.

Part of the problem here is that individuals are often not the target customers for academic publishing: libraries are. Publishers can be worried that if they do sell in ways that are convenient to individuals, that might reduce their profits from libraries. If they sell books individually, instead of as larger sets, then university libraries can order only the volumes that people request, rather than needing to purchase all of them. If they sell softcover copies, libraries can buy them and rebind them in-house, or simply have them as softcover, rather than needing to pay that premium. If they have prices that are reasonable for individuals choosing books to buy with their own money, the prices will need to be far lower than what they can be for libraries being instructed to buy books by others and needing to figure out how.

And, as you mention, the journal (and reference) side is even worse. Outside of very high profile journals, which are simply expensive for individual subscriptions, many otherwise quite reasonable journals from reputable publishers simply won't offer subscriptions to individuals at all: their only option for individuals may well be article-level purchases at prices that would be utterly absurd for actual research. In some cases, they also won't offer subscriptions to institutions, except as a (potentially very large) package of journals. At a small university, I can remember the library pointing out that getting access to one yearly proceedings publication very important for our field would cost a five figure yearly amount per year, because it was only sold as a package of hundreds of publications. Larger universities can have problems with this in the six or seven figures.

reisse3• 4 years ago

but e-books can be purchased pretty much anywhere in the world. I'm in Sweden

Sorry, but by "pretty much anywhere in the world" you clearly mean "first world". If you live outside of US/Canada and EU it is much harder to obtain books legally. Publishing agreements usually cover specific countries, and no-one cares about, for example, selling books in English in Central Asia. So even if you have means to pay for the book (which can be challenging - and I'm not talking about "having money" here, I'm talking about "technical possiblity" - Visa and Mastercard are not as universal as they might seem from the first world), most of the time no-one can or wish to sell it to you legally.

Interesting that Steam solved most of that problems for game distribution though. They have worldwide publishing agreements, regional prices AND good support of local payment providers in many countries. I think a lot of people underestimate how these factors allowed Steam to overtake piracy.

anhner• 4 years ago

If you live outside of US/Canada and EU it is much harder to obtain books legally

I completely agree and even though I imagine countries outside of these have it much worse, even within the EU you can find massive differences between countries. For example, there is a much smaller selection in Eastern European countries vs. Western, and books are the same price or sometimes even pricier while wages are significantly lower.

deafpolygon3• 4 years ago

allowed Steam to overtake piracy

Let's not forget the pricing, as well. Older games are actually priced lower than most books and movies, which are still being artificially inflated by their respective distributors.

lezojeda2• 4 years ago

Interesting that Steam solved most of that problems for game distribution though. They have worldwide publishing agreements, regional prices AND good support of local payment providers in many countries. I think a lot of people underestimate how these factors allowed Steam to overtake piracy.

Sadly it is being ruined by people from first-world using VPNs. Many AAA stopped using regional prices and we're stuck paying the same cost as in the first world.

smeagull2• 4 years ago

It's human culture. The idea that it should be the sole provenance of rich multi-nationals to decide who can afford to read is disgusting. It should all be freely accessible.

Removing money from the equation would also solve other quality issues.

sabellito• 4 years ago

How would the authors pay rent?

jasmer2• 4 years ago

It's 'disgusting' to suggest others should have to labour for you for free - and suggesting 'removing money from the issue would solve' issues is more than naive, it's glib.

IP is not 'corporate protectionism'.

The entire system absolutely depends on it, moreover, the vast majority of IP holders are very small entities.

Particularly in this case, authors.

The internet is actually a greatly liberating opportunity for authors, especially those on the 'long tail' to develop an audience that they would never have an opportunity to otherwise.

And of course - anyone who wants to create for free, as many do, can do that.

But if there's no concept of IP, then it implies 'creative work goes unpaid' and paradoxically, flushes surpluses into those that have much more material power in the value chain - a bit like 'open source' devs who work tirelessly on projects whereupon the surpluses are mostly captured by large corporate institutions.

Of course there's always grey areas, and on some level 'release valves' for information is appropriate, but on the whole, IP protections are reasonable.

Vast amount of the works we are used to in our daily lives both professional and private, upon which we depend, would immediately vanish, lacking any kind of viable business model.

Finally - there's much ado in Africa on so many fronts, if you want to help to solve IP distribution issues there related to price discrimination, there's a lot of opportunity there.

ccbccccbbcccbb2• 4 years ago

So let's totally remove the heat-transfer agent from the thermodynamic machine of society and instead rely on an army of maxwell demons to decide how much food and floor space each human element in the system should be given for its work, right?

That was called 'communism', had been attempted to implement, resulted in millions of deaths and miserably failed regardless due to the physics of the process.

The heat transfer agent is not the problem per se, it's the ability of some entities to create it out of thin air and pump into the system, as well as shady mechanisms of its distribution.

Mandatum• 4 years ago

This is the most American take I’ve seen on the debate yet.

criddell• 4 years ago

which can easily be removed by widely-accessible tools

Even if that were true today, it's a cat-and-mouse game and it may not always be true.

I don't know if FairPlay DRM that Apple uses or Adobe's DRM has been thoroughly cracked, but last time I checked, Amazon's KFX hasn't truly been cracked yet. The best I've seen are workarounds to get Amazon to deliver the book in an older format that has been cracked, but then you lose the typography improvements that are tied to the new format.

christophilus2• 4 years ago

I bought a Kobo for its easy public library integration. Jokes on me. My public library doesn't have most of the books I want, and the way ebooks are leased to public libraries is a disgrace-- something I only found out after buying the Kobo. So, what's a guy to do? I buy the books wherever I can find them at the cheapest price (usually on the used market, sometimes via Kindle store, sometimes via Kobo store). Then, I pirate it, since that's a much more convenient way to get a DRM-free format that actually works on my device.

In my case, at least, I paid for every z-library book I ever downloaded--with one exception. Z-library also made it easy to browse books the way you would in a physical book store. Sometimes, you think, "Looks interesting." You open it up, read a few pages and realize, "Not for me." Z-library was a good way to do this.

Both of those are legitimate use cases. Probably not the most common use case, but it sure was handy, and now I've got to find a replacement.

andai4• 4 years ago

Most of zlib's content was from libgen, zlib had a nicer ui though.

jpgvm• 4 years ago

Your geographical white privilege is showing.

Getting access to books for instance in SEA or Africa is an entirely different story to one of the richest countries in the world with some of the highest standards of living (in your case Sweden but could apply to most EU/NA/AU/NZ).

I would say the vast majority pirating couldn't afford the work in the first place, meaning nothing is lost from the perspective of the author. It's not a sale stolen, it's someone that would otherwise simply go without.

DoingIsLearning6• 4 years ago

Your geographical white privilege is showing.

Although I fully agree with the points you make I just want to point out that being wealthy (from a world average wealth standpoint) is dissociated from being white.

The issue is limited access to resources due to lack of wealth, or geo-location with bizantine distribution contracts. Race has little to do with this discussion. Plenty of white poor people across the globe, plenty of non-white rich people across the globe.

Tomte• 4 years ago

but e-books can be purchased pretty much anywhere in the world.

English and local books at least. Can I easily buy Swedish-language books in Germany? I really don't know.

nathell• 4 years ago

I think we can have our cake and eat it too.

https://blog.danieljanus.pl/2022/09/24/paying-for-books/

mavhc• 4 years ago

This is the simplest solution, get a drm ebook, and pay the person who wrote it directly, they'll get way more money from you that way than if you bought the book

phpisthebest7• 4 years ago

>An enormous amount of work goes into producing a book

So your saying books should be protected because they take alot of work, but movies should not because they dont?

I am highly confused by your ethical position here. Either creative works should be protected by copyright or they should not.

It seems your personal connection to authors have clouded your judgement in favor of that medium over other creatives mediums, I wonder if you would feel the same if you had personal relationships with independent film maker, to toss your analogy back, not ever filmmaker has a J.K Rowling book to make a film about which comes with a built in audience

Now me personally I think copyright is WAY over protective, I think the US original copyright law was a good balance, 14 years, with 1 extension if the physical person that created the work requests it (i.e corporations get 14 years only, individuals can get up to 28 years of protection)

psychphysic2• 4 years ago

If I can access a book for free at a library.

Why can't I read it online for free?

Ultimately the answer will be about rights and really suggesting the author can put arbitrary restrictions in content that's been purchased.

Those restrictions exist for financial reasons not moral. As such this is not theft in any ethical sense but a quirk of the laws. A law apparently many people disagree with...

aliqot2• 4 years ago

It's not free at the library, the book was purchased with your taxes.

gglitch• 4 years ago

Careful. They'll come for the libraries next.

nudpiedo• 4 years ago

Although I agree with you, tell me now how can I find "The book of Gossage" which is a singular classic book nowadays out of catalogue.

JKCalhoun2• 4 years ago

Agree, forget copyright, there needs to be an "abandonware" clause similar to the (unauthorized, I know) way software is treated.

Plenty of books I have only been able to find on eBay and at sometimes insane prices.

peoplefromibiza4• 4 years ago

try buying Italian books in USA.

Hell, it's hard to find them even in France!

tuyiown• 4 years ago

I'm french. I occasionally buy ebooks, but the price of eBooks is maintained artificially higher to protect traditional (paper) channels. The things is, that extra money does _not_ go to the authors, which I would finance way more wholeheartedly. Basically you get taxed because of your medium preferences, and the money is pocketed by the worse actor of the whole business.

connorgutman10• 4 years ago

It's very simple actually. You (and most of HN) live in a tech industry bubble. Living wages in the U.S are terrible and disposable income is non-existent. I work a 9-5 just like everyone else but when it comes down to it I don't have the money to buy new books. I can either buy used paperback from a second-hand store, go to the library, or pirate an epub. None of these options pay the original author and are effectively the same. Given that I was never going to pay anyways, why do you find the third option unethical? It hurts absolutely no one but greatly enhances my quality of life and (in some cases) helps society by making me a more educated individual. The only thing piracy costs authors is opportunity (which in my case was always 0).

throwaway2037• 4 years ago

BetterWorldBooks.com is excellent. I have bought from them for years. I recommend you try it.

Also, you wrote: <<None of these options pay the original author>> Libraries buy millions of books per year in the US -- expensive hardbacks. They must be the single largest buying group. That money pays authors. Also, I never once saw an author upset that a library was lending their book. The same is true for second hand book selling.

Barrin92• 4 years ago

If you're pirating Stephen King or a 300$ textbook from a guy who has tenure at Harvard I doubt anyone probably including the author cares but a fair amount of authors aren't making any more than you make.

Friend of mine published her own graphic novel basically living in her parents attic and a day after it was out someone had ripped it and thrown it on a comic piracy site. That's not ethical.

If you live on a 12-15/hour salary which I have too you still can afford the occassional book here and there, you can't tell me you spend zero on recreational stuff. I don't care if anyone fleeces Marvel studios but if people start pirating independent works from people no better off, often worse, that's iffy.

trabant004• 4 years ago

I'm going to pretend you are serious and genuine so:

- living wages in the US are something most of the rest of world only dreams about. And most can afford to buy a book once in a while, even new (of course it depends on the book). Source: eastern Europe.

- second hand and library books have generated revenue for the author already. Going full piracy and decreasing demand for the those two hurts the author, hurts the second book stores and hurts the libraries.

I pirate books as well but at least I'm honest about the consequences of my actions.

nickkell• 4 years ago

Renting from a library does in fact pay the author, at least in the UK

achenet3• 4 years ago

Not sure the authors are getting much money, compared to the publishers. Perhaps it depends on the nice - I heard sci-fi is rather low margin, whereas academic publishing tends to be rent-seeking.

Still, with the world wide web, it's possible to cut out the middleman, get the book and directly support the author is he puts a Stripe button on his site. Not sure why we need the publishing company middleman anymore.

prisoner6553212• 4 years ago

if we don't buy their books, they won't be able to produce the next one for people to pirate.

This is a false dichotomy. Book piracy and traditional book publishing co-exist. If book publishing wants to better compete with piracy, they can innovate like other industries have. As well, your implied prediction —- that if we don’t “stop all the downloading” [0] then books will disappear —- is decidedly ahistorical. Books have existed since long before publishing houses existed, and indeed it’s easier than ever to publish a book and get money for it.

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1eA3XCvrK90

beej71• 4 years ago

Put another way, there's no difference in profit between:

10,000 book sales and zero pirated copies.

10,000 book sales and 10 million pirated copies.

The only thing left to argue about is what percentage of those pirated copies would have turned into book sales if the free versions had not been available.

wellareyousure3• 4 years ago

I can't see stealing some poor author's work in the same light.

I sympathize with this sentiment. I have writers in my family.

Anyone who wants to be making money in writing is either (1) doing something else, like being a celebrity, and selling a book directly to their pre-existing audience (2) writing for TV, movies or went to law school. So few authors make money on their books, that the existence (or non-existence) of piracy has no impact on the aggregate experience of authors.

if we don't buy their books

The truth is there is no audience for the vast majority of paid-up-front books, games, movies, music or other creative media. There is a large audience for TikToks. Part of the journey is coming to terms with this. The reality is people are writing because they like to, and the money doesn't matter, and the piracy doesn't matter, and they are not on Hacker News complaining about it anyway.

That said, I believe these sentiments, expressed elsewhere, about being American and being poor or whatever. The commenters have limited empathy and bandwidth.

zerotolerance• 4 years ago

I'm an author. Steal my book. The whole point of writing is to hopefully help anyone learn something that you've shared. Authors aren't writing for the money those who do are selling at such volumes that they'll never even notice the dip. In most cases they'd be trying to get blood from stone.

Steal it every time.

lezojeda2• 4 years ago

10 USD is the average cost for an e-book from my anecdotal experience, some even 20. 200 USD our average salary range approximately.

It's not easy for us, you can say "well if you can't afford them then tough luck" which I could understand but that'd be your point for most of the third world. There's a reason Steam videogames regional prices exist for example (which people with VPNs ruined it exploting the system)

sombragris2• 4 years ago

e-books can be purchased pretty much anywhere in the world

That would be true if and only if there's an ebook version for the book you want.

There are lots of books (even essential works for some fields) out there for which there are no legal ebooks. Your only hope would be to get a digitized PDF from zlibrary or libgen. Even if you had the cash to spare for purchasing it, you can't.

One interesting case is what happened with books such as James Livingston's "Modern Christian Thought" (Fortress Press). I need it as an ebook. Well, they have (and I have purchased) volume I as an ebook, but they have Volume II only as paperback.

I reached out to the publisher to inquire whether they are going to release Volume II as an ebook. Someone there answered, telling me that they "forgot" to release Volume II in electronic format, and that they plan to release it "soon". I'm still waiting...

thescriptkiddie• 4 years ago

They're burning a thousand libraries and you're complaining about hypothetical lost profits?

dredmorbius11• 4 years ago

It takes but a few moments thought to realise that there are many alternative remuneration models available for authors and creators.

See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33647625>

charlieyu1• 4 years ago

I’m a poor author that nobody pays a lot for my books anyway. Copyright should be protected, but current piracy laws and enforcements are disgusting.

prvc• 4 years ago

I can't see stealing some poor author's work in the same light.

Thankfully, the topic is book "piracy", which is something completely different from the above description, so you're right in some sense.

the_arcadian• 4 years ago

Media publishers (and I use the term in the broadest sense) knew, going in, that the Internet was designed to distribute and copy information, in many cases completely anonymously. But they embraced the platform and chose that business model because they knew that it would lower their costs dramatically, even once piracy was taken into account, and they've been largely successful.

Also in my experience CEOs really know their businesses, which makes me think they also understand the economics and dynamics of piracy to a greater extent than the rest of us, even pirates. From what observe, I think that they see pirates largely as hobbyists and influencers rather than lost customers or individuals out for economic gain, and are really only concerned with piracy at scale, like in this Z library case.

reisse3• 4 years ago

I guess in 2022 "don't ever travel to countries that have extradition agreements with US" should've already been #0 opsec rule, above everything else.

Sad for them. Does anyone know if Z-library provided torrent dumps?

gadders• 4 years ago

Apparently yes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32972923

adamors• 4 years ago

As Russian nationals, their choices are rather limited at this time.

cft• 4 years ago

It's intersection of these two sets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_extradit...

https://visaguide.world/visa-free-countries/russian-passport...

keewee72• 4 years ago

No? The countries that don't have extradition agreements with the US overlap a lot with countries that have friendly relations with Russia.

China, Cuba, and Russia would be the ideal choices if you're on the run from US authorities.

reisse3• 4 years ago

Given the political climate, they could easily ban Russian books from their platform and live happily in Moscow. Surely I'd prefer that over US custody.

rexreed• 4 years ago

My suggestion to Russian nationals who are engaged in crime: stay in Russia.

newsclues• 4 years ago

Extradition agreements are irrelevant when extraordinary rendition is a legal and valid option.

voakbasda2• 4 years ago

Ummm, aren’t those extrajudicial? Or have I watched too many movies?

whimsicalism5• 4 years ago

They're not going to extraordinary rendition over a piracy claim.

roel_v• 4 years ago

"Does anyone know if Z-library provided torrent dumps? "

They didn't, but pilimi.org does (have to access via Tor to get the torrents). That said, there have been 0 seeders since the original ZLib bust. https://twitter.com/AnnaArchivist/status/1592654308516179970 (pilimi author) says there should be an http mirror now, and I'm probably stupid but I can't find it anywhere. Seems to me it's the end of Z-Library. The end of an era, really.

dartharva8• 4 years ago

Here it is: https://annas-archive.org/

I sincerely hope Anna stays safe though. They can (and will) come for her and her team too.

hggh2• 4 years ago

https://ia801505.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/17...

keewee72• 4 years ago

IIRC Z-library is a LibGen mirror that is faster than other mirrors but is also much more monetized with more ads, limited free downloads, and premium plans.

Something else weird about this story is why did they move to a country that has an extradition agreement with the US? There are plenty of countries that would ignore US pressure to arrest them.

AkshatJ27• 4 years ago

Z-Library is a popular (and illegal) library. They have taken the Library Genesis collection and made it easily searchable. On top of that, they have become very effective at soliciting new book contributions, by incentivizing contributing users with various perks. They currently do not contribute these new books back to Library Genesis. And unlike Library Genesis, they do not make their collection easily mirrorable, which prevents wide preservation. This is important to their business model, since they charge money for accessing their collection in bulk (more than 10 books per day).

(http://annas-blog.org/blog-3x-new-books.html)

bjord• 4 years ago

it seems like their collection began as a libgen mirror, but expanded far beyond it (and was definitely heavily monetized)

the move might've had something to do with mobilization in russia, though I'm just guessing

ajot• 4 years ago

I don't know their specific reasons, but I know of some transnational companies that since the start of the russian invasion dissolved their russian division and told their employees to choose from a list of countries to relocate.

Argentina is very easy to migrate to (the preamble to our constitution marks the spirit of a nation "free for all men that want to live here") and quality of life isn't that bad.

droopyEyelids2• 4 years ago

If you have no idea what you're talking about, post your comment as a question instead of a statement full of inaccurate misconceptions

jcrawfordor• 4 years ago

Could you expand on what's inaccurate? I have honestly been very confused about all this Z-Library news because it struck me as being... well, a profit-motivated knockoff of libgen. With the number of users it has I assume it offers advantages I don't know about?

DoingIsLearning6• 4 years ago

A small thought experiment:

- Book sales in 2021 were about _9_ billion dollars. [0]

- Wage theft in the US is estimated at _50_ billion dollars. [1]

Can you imagine if the resources of the justice and labour departments would prioritize citizen wage over publishers' revenue?

Would you rather have funds allocated towards social justice or have them spent on intimidating foreign nationals completely outside US jurisdiction?

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/197710/annual-book-store...

[1] https://www.epi.org/press/wage-theft-costs-american-workers-...

nivenkos3• 4 years ago

But piracy affects the capitalists that run the US establishment, whereas wage theft benefits them.

christophilus2• 4 years ago

I agree with you, but it's always easier to go after a centralized target who is doing a thing at scale. Is there a wage-thief who's doing it at scale?

glogla• 4 years ago

I'm sure e.g. Walmart would have few billions in their name.

Arkhaine_kupo6• 4 years ago

Is there a wage-thief who's doing it at scale?

FAANG got caught having a wage cartel where poaching affected possible salaries between workers.

They got a measly 50 million dollar fine.

Wage theft pays off in america, and Amazon and Apple being trillion dollar companies proves it.

andsoitis4• 4 years ago

Wage theft in the US is estimated at _50_ billion dollars. [1]

That report is from 2014. What does it stand at today (whether in absolute or relative terms)?

phpisthebest7• 4 years ago

>Would you rather have funds allocated towards social justice or have them spent on intimidating foreign nationals

I would rather the justice department, and labor dept choose their targets for non-political reasons, neither for "social justice" nor corporate protectionism

Arkhaine_kupo6• 4 years ago

I would rather the justice department, and labor dept choose their targets for non-political reasons

You want the justice department, a branch of the goverment, to not be political?

peoplefromibiza4• 4 years ago

In 1993, the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action treats social justice as a purpose of human rights education

The declaration was signed by the US as well.

So social justice is an objective of US as a whole, as a democracy, as a Country, hence is not a political view since 1993 in USA.

rfrey• 4 years ago

It must be one of the triumphs of capitalism that forcing employers to pay their workers what they're owed is considered a partisan action.

Clent• 4 years ago

What do you mean by 'social justice' and the implication it is a bad thing?

I postulate, labor justice is social justice.

wellareyousure3• 4 years ago

neither for "social justice"

Listen to yourself.

zb1plus• 4 years ago

Couldn't agree more. It is disgraceful how our tax dollars are used to prop up failed business models and oppress the little guy. Just another example of how supposedly democratic states only serve the interests of the elite.

Vt71fcAqt75• 4 years ago

It is disgraceful how our tax dollars are used to prop up failed business models and oppress the little guy

U.S. Government Spending, FY 2022 Top 10 Spending by Category

$ 1.22 T Social Security

$ 914 B Health

$ 865 B Income Security

$ 767 B National Defense

$ 755 B Medicare

$ 677 B Education, Training, Employment, and Social Services

How do you explain this data?

Source:https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

primroot• 4 years ago

"Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all." - Adam Smith

1letterunixname2• 4 years ago

Visit any courtroom in America. It's poor people who commit small crimes who end up in prison. Wall St. fat cats who push opiates on the masses get away with murder and get a slap on the wrist.

dimva• 4 years ago

Wage theft is committed by millions of employers, this "theft" was committed by just a few people. While I agree with your general sentiment, the resources required to prosecute wage theft would be vastly greater than to prosecute this case.

That being said, they should definitely prosecute wage theft much more than they are now. Maybe the fear of jail time if wage theft were actually prosecuted a few times would deter most other potential wage thieves.

DoingIsLearning6• 4 years ago

Wage theft is committed by millions of employers...

Yes, and of those there are a handful doing it to millions of employees. Wage theft is not a few night shifts rounded off at SMEs. Plenty of traded companies doing it, no reason why you cannot target low numbers of big fish.

WeylandYutani• 4 years ago

In my country wage theft is committed on migrant labour.

Western Europe is not much different than Quatar in that respect only nobody cares.

retconn• 4 years ago

Instead, how much would it cost for the IRS to check everyone's returns reconciliation against employer statements?

burkaman• 4 years ago

I don't really agree, prosecuting all wage theft would be an enormous effort, but this story is not about prosecuting all book "theft", just one case. The argument is that the resources spent on this one case would have been better spent on investigating and prosecuting wage theft, not solving the entire issue.

Also, wage theft seems to be a much simpler thing to prosecute. You don't have to investigate the owners of anonymous websites or track down any foreign nationals, just show up to a job site, see how long people are working, see how much they're paid, and prosecute if the numbers don't match. Obviously I'm exaggerating, but it's a much more tangible, sort of "old-fashioned" crime, one I would imagine the FBI is pretty good at solving.

1letterunixname2• 4 years ago

Will never happen just like how undocumented migrants are exploited by meat processing plants while being de-facto shielded from deportation... because corporations and money talk.

leephillips• 4 years ago

What these criminals were doing is wage theft. As someone who earns money from books, I would like to personally thank the US Justice Department for their excellent work in shutting down this operation, that was stealing my wages.

neverlearns• 4 years ago

hey Lee, I just checked out your website.

17/11/2022 9:49 Minimizing the Elastic Energy of Growing Leaves by Conformal Mapping: I learned to love conformal mapping while studying fluid dynamics. This is a fascinating application.

The paper you linked is a closed-access paper.

https://journals.aps.org/prl/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.218...

Did you use sci-hub to access it or did you actually pay the AIP $35 to read it?

If you used sci-hub, I consider you to be a hypocrite.

Maybe I should personally invite all of the people who read your books to reconsider your opinion on the freedom of information when considering buying any of your books.

lc9er• 4 years ago

I have family that works for DOL's Wage & Hour division. The amount of wage theft is _staggering_. They are chronically understaffed and overworked. Plus, every time a Republican administration comes into power, their enforcement power gets severely limited, except in the most egregious cases.

theandrewbailey• 4 years ago

When people get paid more, the government gets more tax revenue. Smart government would double this division's resources, but governments are anything but smart.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 4 years ago

completely outside US jurisdiction
The pair was arrested on November 3, 2022 in Cordoba, Argentina at the request of the United States.

The government of Argentina disagrees.

DoingIsLearning6• 4 years ago

Extradition agreements is not the same as US law being applied in Argentinian soil.

jiveturkey2• 4 years ago

Sleep deprivation of just 10 min per night across the entire USA adult population of 330M is 3.3Bn minutes, is over 6 thousand YEARS of sleep related fatigue, etc. PER NIGHT

Can you imagine if we attacked that problem in earnest?

My point, obviously, is that 50 billion is nothing on a per capita basis. This arrest is very high leverage, and very effective use of resources.

DoingIsLearning6• 4 years ago

Your argument that this problem is too distributed is valid but a little out of touch. Wage theft disproprionately affects lower income people.

There is about 39 million americans below poverty line. That's about 1200 dollars a year. I am sure it would actually make a hell of a big difference to many people below the poverty line.

ckw• 4 years ago

So copyright is incentivizing only $9 billion of spending on books… This seems suboptimal. You’d think it’d be possible to design a different government scheme that yielded say, twice as much book publishing, but with no restriction on copying. Same thing for music.

1vuio0pswjnm7• 4 years ago

"Do not take advantage of a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether that worker is an Israelite or is a foreigner residing in one of your towns. Pay them their wages each day before sunset, because they are poor and are counting on it. Otherwise they may cry to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin." - Deuteronomy 24:1415 (TNIV)

throwawaydad12• 4 years ago

Can you imagine if the resources allocated to "social justice" were allocated towards the poor and others in dire need?

trabant004• 4 years ago

Z-library was not about freeing books, they where pirating for profit. The free account was limited in downloads and they had 2 tiers of premium accounts, don't remember the sums or details. They where profiting on the works of others too, they did not rip the books themselves or anything like that.

411111111111111• 4 years ago

The free tier was something like 5 books per day and was throttled by ip. How many books do you usually read per day that this argument holds any kind of meaning?

They throttled it, sure … but that wasn’t really a rate in which you’d run into unless you’re just downloading everything. Which you still could just by cycling your ip.

You also didn’t need an account unless you wanted to send the book directly to your Kindle. You’re all around just misinformed on the topic

ezconnect• 4 years ago

Free tier is 10 books per day. They really have a nice search and related books view making discovery easy. Lot of people will miss z library.

mirzap2• 4 years ago

How much prison time they face? I'm not sad about them. They did it for the money, not because they believed knowledge should be free. They basically stole other people work and put their paywall to access stolen books. Total opposite of Libgen or Sci-Hub.

pkoird2• 4 years ago

Their free model was much more than enough for a regular user to use. I mean 10 books download per day? I'm not sure if I personally would have had to ever exceed that limit.

deathgripsss• 4 years ago

I didn't even realise there was a limit. I used to get a couple of books a month. Never close to 10 a day.

mirzap2• 4 years ago

Which is bad. They made a mirror of Libgen, closed it and charged money for access to it. You were unable to create a mirror from their mirror. Why put a limit at all? Why charge for access, just as same as publishers do? Defeats entire purpose of Libgen and SciHub.

arglebargle123• 4 years ago

It was 10 downloads per day from the website and then a further 10 from the telegram bot too.

technoooooost• 4 years ago

you must be fun at parties

nivenkos3• 4 years ago

The American Empire strikes again.

You'd think they would have seen this coming though.

I think a long-term solution is a universal revenue-sharing programme - so like some portion of taxes is allocated to a universal repository, and then paid out to creators according to usage. No middle-men and no distribution issues, etc.

djmips• 4 years ago

What about a Spotify for books?

andsoitis4• 4 years ago

universal revenue-sharing programme

Run by whom? The UN?

prox2• 4 years ago

Maybe in the first 5 years it’s just what it is now, and then it goes into the repository. I am going to assume most sales are in those years.

dartharva8• 4 years ago

I think a long-term solution is a universal revenue-sharing programme - so like some portion of taxes is allocated to a universal repository, and then paid out to creators according to usage. No middle-men and no distribution issues, etc.

So, just another publishing and distribution monopoly, no matter who runs it. Still a good improvement over the current status quo, I'll agree. Flawed as they may be, Spotify and Youtube did end up boosting independent creative production and accessibility of content manifold.

nivenkos3• 4 years ago

But government naturally has a monopoly.

Like the US already forces publishers to send books to the Library of Congress with the mandatory deposit.

woadwarrior01• 4 years ago

Now, do SBF.

revskill• 4 years ago

First time heard about Z-library. The home page design seems like a scam page though.

slbtty• 4 years ago

It is a gate to the great knowledge.

ddevault• 4 years ago

Man, fuck this.

trabant004• 4 years ago

What happened to "you get what you pay for" and "if you're not the customer you are the product"? We already know what happens with free content on the internet: it turns to shit. And no, wikipedia or open source are not models you can apply to most books. The ones you can, we already have them: free programming books and the sorts.

Do you want books to be the next low effort, low quality, ads ridden, ideology pushing, click bait, spam, micro transactions, gambling medium? Asking for them to be free (as in beer) is the way to go.

Another thing: as a long time pirate from a poor country myself I never understood the need to morally justify piracy. I do it because I want to spend money elsewhere, not because I feel it is my right or it should be. I do it because I can and I profit from it. My head will not explode with cognitive dissonance if I accept I am wronging others to help myself.

dartharva8• 4 years ago

Do you want books to be the next low effort, low quality, ads ridden, ideology pushing, click bait, spam, micro transactions, gambling medium?

Were books and works that came before copyright law was invented "low effort" and "low quality"? What kind of mental gymnastics does it take to equate IP laws with creativity? It's rather with and because of copyright laws that literature and educational content have gone down the drain. It's now that many books get written with the sole intention of it getting consoomed by as many people as possible, riddled with dark patterns and cringy styles. Information and ideas are NOT your private property if you make them public.

predictsoft• 4 years ago

The bizarre thing is that they asked for donations as Amazon gift cards! Surely Amazon could have blocked them?

dewey• 4 years ago

And how would Amazon know which gift cards were donated to them? You can buy them with cash everywhere, re-sell the product you bought in cash and use that to fund the site.

yewenjie• 4 years ago

TorrentFreak report has some extra details - https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-indicts-two-russians-for-runnin...

lakomen• 4 years ago

1st time I heard about it. I'll try to find the tor site.

dredmorbius11• 4 years ago

An alternative is Library Genesis.

hknmtt• 4 years ago

"The pair was arrested on November 3, 2022 in Cordoba, Argentina at the request of the United States" ...

uni_baconcat• 4 years ago

I respect the copyright of publisher and author, I also admire people sharing expensive knowledge to those who do not have the ability to get one. This is a hard choice to me.

prox2• 4 years ago

I actually bought more books by checking out the book first for free (often the sample part of an electronic book is not helpful) But I might not be representative.

ApolloFortyNine• 4 years ago

The problem with allowing piracy will always be that no one really wants to spend money. Just because I have a spare $200 doesn't mean I want to spend it if I don't have to.

If you give people the choice between free and $x amount, 99% of people will choose free. You see this with just about anything that let's people name their own price.

josh_fyi3• 4 years ago

I was delighted when my book showed up on Z-library! I of course was never paid for authoring that book; indeed I paid a subvention to publish it with Harvard University Press. At some point, the rights were sold to the giant publisher Brill, which was charging $30 per chapter for a book that has no value by chapter.

Luckily, some kind soul at University of Marburg uploaded it and Library Genesis still has it.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/141915/

https://libgen.is/search.php?req=Joshua%20Fox&column[]=autho...

sitkack2• 4 years ago

I know two instances of authors uploading their own books to libgen. Both esoteric academic books that they were not paid to write.

kragen• 4 years ago

three

Balgair• 4 years ago

Reminds me of how Orwell preferred to write introductions to 1984 only for illegal reprints behind the iron curtain. I can't find the exact quote but he said that he'd write it for that audience alone as he knew without a doubt that they would read his introduction. If I ever actually write a book, I hope I have enough courage to do the same and only write introductions for cracked copies. You know the audience actually cares if they are willing to risk the fuzz just to read.

stubish• 4 years ago

The dynamics are completely different to printed books, which need to be purchased by the reader. Cracked e-books are downloaded in bulk and often never read or replaced by another 'free' book when the first few pages don't engage sufficiently. It isn't unusual for someone to get an ebook reader, have a mate fill its storage with best sellers or a genre dump, and never ever download a new title or even know how.

duxup• 4 years ago

Is there much risk just in reading a cracked book!

RHSeeger• 4 years ago

If you didn't get paid for writing the book, how did the copyright transfer to someone else (so that they could sell it)? Or the transferable rights to print/distribute it, if that's what we're talking about here.

josh_fyi3• 4 years ago

I signed away rights to the President and Fellows of Harvard College (the legal name in this context for Harvard). That was not a problem as it was clear to me that this would not be a money-maker for anyone. The business-side was handled by Eisenbrauns, a small publisher. When the owner retired, the business sold to Penn State. Later, the Harvard Semitic Museum (the part of Harvard in charge of the series) sold the rights to Brill. I am guessing that Harvard Semitic Museum saw this as a chance to get a little bit of money out of their asset, and Brill saw this as a cow to milk to death, the way the price for legacy software is raised to sky-high levels as the product dies. And indeed, I am guessing that Brill is not making much -- no one did. https://www.sspnet.org/community/news/brill-announces-collab...

sedatk• 4 years ago

I've been getting paid for my book generously, but I'm still happy to know that my book can be read at online libraries for free, so the people who can't afford it can benefit from it. My publisher, Manning, also has these HumbleBundle campaigns around Christmas time to sell many books at once that makes a single book cost $1 or so.

If online libraries can be made even more streamlined, the demand for piracy would diminish eventually. The same applies to academic papers.

ROTMetro3• 4 years ago

I see you are taking the ticketmaster approach. You knowingly put your works into a contractual system that you can then condemn later so you can feel good and let the 'system' 'other' 'society' you were a part of be the bad one. I have news for you, that 'system' 'other' 'society' includes you, as the person who voluntarily agreed to let your work be locked away. But it's 'ticketmaster' that is bad, no you, who voluntarily contributed.

codedokode• 4 years ago

Don't you think that the punishments are too severe? Severe punishments should be for violent crimes, not for stealing several thousands dollars from authors.

wafriedemann• 4 years ago

Well, they would be fine if they had studied at Stanford. Crooks don't study at Stanford.

generationP3• 4 years ago

Cheap bet: We won't hear many authors rejoice over this. As an example, Stephen King's pinned tweet is concerned with a very different kind of theft ( https://nitter.it/StephenKing ).

In academia, this is slightly narrowing our choices (not much because Z-Lib has never been the main source). As for the books we can't read... well, we won't then. At this point, it's the books competing over our attention, not us scrambling to find them. Another cheap bet: The balances of academic publishers at least will not improve from this.

ketzu3• 4 years ago

Am I misunderstanding something, or is this tweet circling the completely wrong part? Revenue vs payment is completely meaningless, because it is low due to advance payments.

The 'important' part is revenue after profits vs royalties, or profit sharing, which seems to be around 8.3%.

culopatin• 4 years ago

Imagine working really hard to put content out and you have to agree to a deal of 8% you, 92% the one just distributing it for you. It’s like when artists were complaining that Spotify wasn’t paying them enough when in reality is their label sucking most of the earnings.

jl6• 4 years ago

There is widespread support for the complaint that copyright duration is excessive, and that a degree of piracy should be tolerated as a form of protest, but IMHO these guys crossed a line when they tried to make money from piracy.

SunlightEdge• 4 years ago

I will miss Z-Library... I hope it's alternatives are as good as it...

I linked it to an old email account of mine. Could there be repercussions if you downloaded books from that site? I probably downloaded at least 1k dollars worth of books. Only about half I ever went into.

skjoldr• 4 years ago

A reminder that Z-library is still available through Tor: http://zlibrary24tuxziyiyfr7zd46ytefdqbqd2axkmxm4o5374ptpc52... I doubt it took just two people to handle the entire project.

Synaesthesia• 4 years ago

There's also library genesis https://libgen.rs

henry_viii• 4 years ago

Sad day. I always talked about Z-library with reverence. Z-library was the only way I could access textbooks I was interested in when I was growing up in a developing country. I owe it to Z-library for becoming the software developer I am today.

prirun• 4 years ago

A friend recently gave me a printed copy of Legend of Drizzt. It was about 2 inches thick (3 books in 1), the printing was too small for my crappy eyes, lighting in my room at night is not great, and the printing went too close to the interior edge, all making it hard to read. So I bought a Kindle.

The Kindle worked much better. I got the Kindle Unlimited subscription at no extra cost for 3 months (then $10/mo afterwards), thinking I'd get access to any books on Amazon that were available in the Kindle format. You know, "Unlimited". Wrong! Kindle Unlimited means "whatever Kindle books Amazon wants to give you", not "Unlimited". They need to rename that to "Kindle Limited", "Kindle Picks", or whatever. Of course, this series was not part of KU.

I bought the first few books in the series, even though I already had the printed book, at $8/book, which is kinda pricey considering there are 36 books in the series, so it was going to cost ~$300 to read the whole thing. Then I found out I could download the books from the public library system. It's actually a pretty good model I think, because at least in Indiana, all of the public libraries are in a state-wide consortium, so there are about 5 copies of each book in the series available to "rent" for anyone in Indiana. And it's free.

The e-book business model of $8/book makes no sense to me, at least not for fiction. I don't want 36 already-read e-books sitting on my Kindle - it just junks things up. What I would like is to be able to take a photo of a book I already have, including the ISBN number, and get an electronic copy in my Kindle library for free. That would be so awesome, esp considering that as I get older, reading from a Kindle is way easier than dealing with a physical book.

sva_• 4 years ago

This makes me worried about LibGen. It would be an incredible loss to humanity to see these libraries go for good.

phpisatrash• 4 years ago

Me and my colleagues will be affected by the end of Z library and co related projects.

Here in Brazil and for sure in most second and third world countries, people don't have money to spend in books.

You can argue that people can go to the library, but in most cases it's even expensive to take a bus or taxi even a Uber.

I'm a law student at an university in brazil. Law books are really expensive. Even though my university have a library, sometimes it doesn't have the books that the professors ask us to read.

Since I found z library I could have access to most of books that I needed.

I do know that the writers and publishers have costs and they need to make money, but I don't agree with the fact that we have to pay to have knowledge. It's more like if we don't have money, we can't have knowledge.

diego_moita• 4 years ago

What could be more Brazilian than law students breaking the law in order to be able to understand the law?

Sounds like those specimens collectors from the 19th century that helped on the extinction of species (e.g. dodo bird, great auk) by collecting and embalming them for "preservation".

HideousKojima• 4 years ago

Yes, there used to be massive herds of law textbooks roaming under the canopies of the Amazon, but thanks to Z-library's irresponsible book-hunting and conservation methods they have become a very rare sight. The only remaining herds are in the Oxford University Press/Scholastic//Wiley/Houghton Mifflin textbook preserve located just outside of Brasilia.

joak• 4 years ago

In most countries downloading a book is not illegal. What might be illegal is to distribute copyrighted material. I say "might" because often distributing is not even illegal. Sending to friends and family without making money is usually not illegal. And how do you determine "friends"?

lettergram• 4 years ago

I do know that the writers and publishers have costs and they need to make money, but I don't agree with the fact that we have to pay to have knowledge. It's more like if we don't have money, we can't have knowledge.

For all human history, access to knowledge requires wealth. Simple example — If I want to know how to fix a particular old refrigerator I bought second hand, I need to buy the manual.

That said, I enjoy the story of Jesus feeding hundreds of people with a few fish and a couple loaves of bread. I point out the story is also a parable. Jesus is somehow duplicating the fish and bread to feed the crowd. Isn’t this similar to knowledge? Should we not spread knowledge in a similar way if it’s of no cost to us? If you say “no, the author needs to be paid!” Then I ask, “is not the fisherman and baker missing out on profit from the sale of fish and bread?”

It always brings an interesting discussion around this topic. Fundamentally, I agree knowledge should be free. I post my blogs for free for this very reason. If I need to make money, I do work, sell products; etc.

FormerBandmate2• 4 years ago

Theoretically if Jesus duplicated fish and bread on an industrial scale, yeah, it would. Also, labor still needs to be put in to make the products, all piracy does is make it incredibly easy to make additional copies.

There’s a reason musicians have to constantly tour and the middle class of music has entirely degraded since the 90s

akudha• 4 years ago

I was looking for a book a while ago, it was something like $150 in the U.S. Out of curiosity, I looked up the price in other countries. It was 150 times the exchange rate.

150$ for a book is a lot of money even in the U.S. How do publishers expect other countries to pay the equivalent of 150$ (in local currency)? In many places $150 might be half the monthly salary or worse.

I understand publishers and authors need to get paid, especially the authors. It takes decades to gain expertise in difficult subjects and on top of it, one needs to be able to write well to create a good book. So yes, authors need to be compensated. But at the same time, their customer base in most cases are college kids. How do they expect them to pay? And how much of all that money goes to the authors anyway, who are the real experts vs the middlemen, the publishers?

The whole situation is just depressing.

gruez• 4 years ago

But at the same time, their customer base in most cases are college kids. How do they expect them to pay?

Student loans. When you flood an entire sector with money, it's only logical that prices go up.

syrrim• 4 years ago

There is frequently a system where they sell an international version of the book for significantly lower cost. In order to prevent americans from simply purchasing the international version, it will often have substantial differences. So simply looking up the price of the same book may not show you what would typically be paid in another country.

dotnet00• 4 years ago

The situation gets worse when considering the near racketeering many publishers engage in. I had a couple of professors who assigned us their own $100 textbooks, which of course had a new edition every year and while they wouldn't rely on it much in class, they'd make sure to include at least one question in the exams about something only mentioned in the textbook (without stating that that would happen).

This kind of textbook "abuse" was pretty crazy in undergrad. In comparison, my graduate level professors all either used very old textbooks and didn't really care about the edition or outright used free textbooks.

barrenko• 4 years ago

Not only that, but the last couple of times I actually ordered and paid for a book, it never actually arrived. I can get a refund, sure, but I really needed the books.

attilaberczik• 4 years ago

Use Library Genesis. It's also free and there is no download limit, and you have access to approximately the same books. https://libgen.is/

generationP3• 4 years ago

Yes, but it is hard to tell whether LG will stay up for long either. Their non-commercial nature makes it harder to hit them with heavy damages, arguably, but the underlying threat is the same, and there is no reason to think they are somehow protected from the same dynamic.

Download anything you need and then some. And spread your own writings widely and freely.

gibspaulding• 4 years ago

LibGen is an invaluable resource, but is there reason to expect that Library Genesis will remain accessible for long if similar sites are under attack?

hggh2• 4 years ago

The Z Library is still alive, as a TOR Hidden Service: http://zlibrary24tuxziyiyfr7zd46ytefdqbqd2axkmxm4o5374ptpc52...

dredmorbius11• 4 years ago

How long that remains the case with at least two of its principals arrested may be somewhat uncertain.

Any present operator(s) and site(s) would have to remain outside the reach of US or other Western jurisdiction and extradition treaties.

dpedu• 4 years ago

There is also a ~28TB torrent with ~6M books within it.

https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/ymiwzs/zlibrar...

rg111• 4 years ago

You can argue that people can go to the library,

Where I grew up, my town library did not have any tech or programming books. Forget new jornal issues or cutting edge science books.

"Just go to the library" is such a first-world-and-megacity thing to say.

Mezzie4• 4 years ago

Even in the first world in a giant city it can be crap advice.

I wrote a paper in library school about how the Vancouver Public Library failed to offer anything of substance to intermediate language learners (with a focus on Mandarin materials because of the high Mandarin speaking population) - if you're a person learning Mandarin to communicate with immigrant populations there, you skip from basic travel phrasebooks to videos/movies in Mandarin for Chinese audiences.

Public libraries aren't great at serving the long tail or more advanced interests for various reasons. And academic institutions usually have rules preventing use of their materials by people not affiliated with the school.

mxschumacher3• 4 years ago

i sometimes go to my local library (in a big European city). The computer science section has a lot of "for Dummies" books or titles that are very specific to a certain language version or framework (java 6, Symfony 3). Most of those can go straight to the trash. The many timeless books that exist are far and few between.

uniqueuid• 4 years ago

It sucks, but search for used versions of those books. As long as you're willing to wait a week or two, you can often get used books internationally for <10 dollars.

Also ask your professors if they can share relevant parts of the books they use. Many countries outside the English-speaking world have partial copyright exemptions for education.

A last resort may be to ask professors whether they can apply for evaluation copies. Publishers often give free copies to educators so they can evaluate books for their curriculum. Sadly, it's mostly digital versions today.

ornornor• 4 years ago

Check out #bookz on Undernet.

Also bookfinder.com which works all over the world to find the cheapest used copy (including shipping) to your country.

telcal• 4 years ago

Also #ebooks on irchighway.net

throw8383833jj• 4 years ago

what about older versions of the books? usually if you go back a couple versions it's much much cheaper.

worik• 4 years ago

Old law books?

Mostly correct, often useful.

I think that makes the point?

lobocinza• 4 years ago

Even if you ignore money sometimes a book just isn't available to purchase.

schuke• 4 years ago

In China it’s not even a matter of money. People already need VPN for accessing the free internet. Books are invaluable against censorship.

ROTMetro3• 4 years ago

It's 2022, if people wanted to make their knowledge freely available, they do. You can't claim that knowledge is not shared enough, today, in an age when you have more access to knowledge than people in the past.

You aren't paying for knowledge, you are paying to get knowledge in this form, a form that you apparently find useful. It took many people work to put that together, and those people chose to put their work into a framework that you feel you can just bypass and ignore the laws around.

xtracto2• 4 years ago

A lot of the typical and expected takes for these sort of discussions:

- on one side, people who are in favour of the arrests , because they see their a activities as crimes. They have point

- on the other side people that one way or another, believe that the distribution of the information should be free in some sense. Justifications always abound. A d it's Ok

I offer a third take: Theres no reason why authors should be perpetually paid for the work of 500/1000 hours, or whatever time it took them to write the books; research time included. Publishing a book should give authors, editors and related parties the compensation for their worked time at a fair hourly wage. The same way you a I are compensated hourly.

After that, the only cost of books should be distribution costs, which nowadays are near to 0 with p2p and similar.

The fact that the work output of some people is intended to be overpaid indefinitely, while the output of the rest of us is only paid hourly, is what's unfair.

blairbeckwith• 4 years ago

Does this apply to everyone? If I build and sell an indie software product, should I only be able to sell it for the distribution costs ($0.02/user/month, say) once I have recouped someone's definition of a fair hourly wage for building it?

somebodythere• 4 years ago

Compensated by whom?

dmitryminkovsky• 4 years ago

Authors and creators are not wage workers. They are taking on the risk that their creations may yield them nothing. In that sense they are entrepreneurs/investors, and along with the risk of failure they have the prospect of great "upside". So I think the question is whether you think there should be limits to how much you can earn, etc, in general.

dartharva8• 4 years ago

Creative works can't be valued just by the number of hours it takes to make them. Good books must be paid for more than bad books.

xtracto2• 4 years ago

The way I think this would work is like this:

- A "good writer" sholud release the first chapter of their book (or first N pages or whatever) for free. As a sort of "Resume"/"Portfolio"

- Then, he lists the rest of the TOC for the next chapters of the book, and the price of each of them.

- He raises that money in a place like Kickstarter or similar platform, for each of the chapters. And as he gets the money, he publishes/uploads the new chapters of the book.

- Once he gets the 100% of the price of the book, he has delievered/published all the chapters. He may offer the whole book in one file, printed copy, audio or whatever other medium for an additional prodcution and distribution fee.

With this approach writers who write good books would be able to demand more money per chapter (hence, $ per hour of their work) than writers who write bad books. While at the same time, they would be able to ask for some fixed amount of $ per hour of their work. Sure, a writer like Stephen King may ask for $1000 USD per hour of his work, so one chapter of one of his book will take $40,000 USD. But I am sure given his fame, he won't have any trouble in raising that.

This appraoch would also work for music and software. It is kind of based on the Shareware model used in the 90s.

lofaszvanitt• 4 years ago

You can set your own rules regarding books.

If you profit from a book, you must buy it, no questions answered.

If you pass the 50th page, go buy it.

Same applies to software... if you are generating income with it, you must buy it.

Rest is up to your conscience.

ReptileMan• 4 years ago

Wish them luck. Zlib was a godsend. Let's hope they won't be extradited.

sharperguy• 4 years ago

Burn down the library of Alexandria because free access to information is too inconvenient

prisoner6553212• 4 years ago

A sad day for equal access to information. I’m glad that they made money from Z-Library, they deserve that money for the service they provided.

It’s some bullshit that they were arrested in Argentina on behalf of the US government. From what I can tell they aren’t even US nationals. I know the US scooping up foreigners and locking them away is nothing new (see: Gitmo) but it remains a travesty of justice nonetheless.

auggierose2• 4 years ago

What I was always wondering about, given they are clearly illegal, why did they bother adhering to book take down requests (and pointing out you could still access the book in question via Tor...)? Was there some jurisdiction out there where that made them legal?

tartoran2• 4 years ago

Not many textbooks require a new edition every year and it wasn’t really as bad for the secondhand market where the original buyers would pay exhorbitant prices for textbooks but would recover some of it by selling them as used.

With new editions every semester they want to extract as much money from students which I find appalling, students are kindof poor on average. Piracy is an outcome to that

dchuk• 4 years ago

(Hypothetically)

Couldn’t this concept be built out in a much more decentralized way, where there’s a desktop app you install that is basically a BitTorrent client and a search interface, and then the app synchronizes with all other desktop apps to keep a SQLite database updated with all of the book meta data, and then each user also contributes some amount of disk space (let’s say 1gb) that the app automatically manages storing some amount of the network’s book files in (maybe even encrypted somehow, or fragments of book files, so you never actually have a complete file on any given machine).

So basically a big torrent mesh with redundant, fragmented storage of book files everywhere. People can upload a book, the app shreds it up and broadcasts to the network, enough other apps sync those fragments on their end to make it “permanently” on the network (statistically at least).

The metadata can’t possibly be that big for a million books in a SQLite database. Users would search against their local SQLite DB, and for a book they want to download, it’s just normal BitTorrent downloads in the background. Run it all through TOR or similar.

Thoughts? I am only a user of all of the above tech, never written software for any of it. Is it possible to build a distributed and resilient file sharing system like this?

wellareyousure3• 4 years ago

Their innovation is that they had an in, somewhere, probably at various printers or e-Book distributors, that gave them access to digital copies of books. That is how they manage to have inventory of really obscure stuff. The software doesn't really matter.

rex_lupi• 4 years ago

There's IPFS

chis• 4 years ago

You also need a system to manage books coming in, separating spam/viruses from real content. You either need a centralized source verifying books (zlib and usenet approach) or some kind of voting system like thepiratebay. If it's a centralized source, that'll be the weak point to take down, and voting systems won't work well for unpopular books.

Last I checked there were some pretty good usenet servers flying under the radar with even more books than z-lib, manually curated. So there might not be enough demand for your idea at the moment.

pavelevst• 4 years ago

Very sad day for world’s education. They trying so hard to keep knowledge only for rich

shahidkarimi• 4 years ago

I will make it live again.

dartharva8• 4 years ago

Too many Copyright defenders here, mandatory "the intellectual property oxymoron" read: http://harmful.cat-v.org/economics/intellectual_property/

SpelingBeeChamp• 4 years ago

I don't think it was your intention, but your language is unnecessarily inflammatory.

People who don't share your opinion are allowed to be here. Even if there are more of those people than you'd like.

dartharva8• 4 years ago

Apologies for that. Please ignore the tone in case it appears inflammatory, that was indeed not my intention.

ketzu3• 4 years ago

I wonder, is there a nice site for searching and usage of open source and other free books? There are software repositories, places you go for free video (especially youtube) and more. I see many complaints about missing openness of knowledge. So I think something like that would be nice.

jiveturkey2• 4 years ago

Does anyone know if when FBI/DOJ seizes domain names, do they only do so when an arrest is imminent? It's quite obvious in this case that it was allowed to remain operational while they were investigating. I wonder if that's the general MO for domain seizures. Because there are just tons of domains that should be seized that are still operating. Why don't those get taken down? No way FBI/etc aren't aware of these.

jl2718• 4 years ago

I looked up the actual citation. Here's what I found interesting:

Copyright theft became a crime (versus tort) in 1990 and only applied to the sale of physical copies. It expanded to digital distribution in 2008.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/506

dredmorbius11• 4 years ago

Thanks very much for turning this up.

mrkramer• 4 years ago

I had an idea for books shop website where you would buy a book and get it in paperback, audiobook and e-book form all at once(bundle). Ofc it would be bit pricey but readers could swap between formats at will and writers would be more rewarded and subsidized. Would anybody use it?

Somebody who pirates books in the e-form maybe would want to enjoy it in paperback and audio form as well?

1970-01-01• 4 years ago

They were arrested for a lot more than copyright infringement:

Criminal Copyright

Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud

Wire Fraud

Money Laundering Conspiracy

Andrew_nenakhov• 4 years ago

I believe that copyright should be reformed, and all books must be available for free in the digital form. If there would be fewer books, well, there are more than enough fiction books than one can read in the hundred lifetimes. Technical/science books, and crucial technical information contained in them can be made available as paid web services, or authors could be funded prior to writing it - via crowdfunding, grants, or by irresistible graphomania.

PointyFluff• 4 years ago

I thought Fahrenheit 451 was supposed to be fiction...

p1peridine• 4 years ago

Records obtained by law enforcement from Google LLC (“Google”) and Amazon, Inc. (“Amazon”) provide evidence of the defendant [name]’s control of Z-Library.

They clearly haven't read any "OPSEC 101"-books. Rookie mistake.

robomartin• 4 years ago

My first thought on this is that the people who download books from these sites were never going to buy them in the first place. This is particularly true if they engaged in downloading dozens or hundreds of books. In other words, not sure just how much money anyone lost because of the existence of these sites.

If someone is never going to buy what you sell (let's say they can't afford it) and they are able to get it for free in digital form, you did not incur any expenses and you did not lose any money.

I am not trying to justify IP theft, just trying to understand the financial reality of the matter.

At the extreme is the case of an author who produces a great book after over a year of hard work only to see 100% of the books stolen in digital form. The author has a household to support and goes without income.

dang• 4 years ago

Feds Seize One of the Largest Sites for Pirated Books and Articles, Z-Library - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33570539 - Nov 2022 (6 comments)

Z-Library Aftermath Reveals the Feds Seized Dozens of Domain Names - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33530240 - Nov 2022 (73 comments)

ZLibrary domains have been seized by the United States Postal Inspection Service - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33460970 - Nov 2022 (517 comments)

Z Library - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29365627 - Nov 2021 (36 comments)

Zshelf: Z-Library books downloader for reMarkable tablet - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26355778 - March 2021 (51 comments)

35amxn35• 4 years ago

Yeah extradition treaties and bowing down to the US or the Interpol are how the One World Government begins. Mix that with cheap massive surveillance tech imported from China and every country going cashless and we're in FOR A RIDE.

rglover• 4 years ago

You might even say it's Biblical.

madars• 4 years ago

Docket: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/65760207/united-states-...

SergeAx2• 4 years ago

Release says "defendants profited illegally off work they stole". I wonder what the charges would be if they were runnig Z-Lib as a non-profit?

bitwize• 4 years ago

dredmorbius11• 4 years ago

Taking a fact raised in another comment and returning the discussion to books, information, and its access:

Total bookstore sales in the US are apparently on the order of $9 billion annually.

<https://www.statista.com/statistics/197710/annual-book-store...>

Dividing by a population of 333 millions, we arrive at an annualised per-person book sales figure of just over $27. For a family of four, that's less than $110 annually.

Discussions of books, other content, copyright, and authors almost always descends into lamentations of "but authors should be paid". Those lamenters at the same time seem utterly insensitive to the fact that many millions of people in the US, and billions worldwide, could have access to information but do not, because of an industry-driven interest, largely of publishers rather than authors, on insisting on direct, per-copy, payment for works. This utterly obsolete practice has an enormous deadweight cost in loss of access to information.

I'd given household and family bases above, but the fairer allocation would be based on income or even wealth. I'm sticking with income as those values are easier to find.

Total household income in the US is ... let's call it $9 trillion.[1] So that the $9 billion in book sales is 1/1,000 of household income, equivalent to a taxed rate of 0.1%. The median household earning about $63,000 could have unlimited access for only $63 a year, or $5.25/month. Households falling below the median would pay even less, and I'd suggest a progressive scale to ensure that this fall to nil for lower incomes generally.

That would provide all the present income to authors and publishers, access to unlimited books (I'm assuming digital formats), and lift those deadweight losses, free up access to materials presently under copyright but not available for purchase at all, and much, much more.

Publishers would lose no wealth. Though I strongly suspect we'd discover that what in fact motivates them is power and control.

______________________________

Notes:

1. We're working with 333 million people in the US (<https://www.census.gov/popclock/>), 2.6 per household (<https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/HSD410220>), and a mean (not median) household income of $72,641 (in 2014, <https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/time-ser...>).

mattymf• 4 years ago

I wonder if monetization was the only easy way to prevent abuse from the greedy hyper-thieves. Most people who used Z-Library weren't going to buy the books anyway. The library allowed the hungry to learn while giving the greedy some difficulty. I liked their system. I'm not proud to condone stealing but, in my opinion, people were only stealing from the greedy or the teachers at heart, and the teachers at heart would've given away some of their books for free anyway.

gamesbrainiac• 4 years ago

The Federal Agents need to find more useful things to do with their time, and the people's dime.

This whole things reminds me of Library.nu. Sad day.

charlescearl• 4 years ago

Links for legal defense appreciated.

jeegsy• 4 years ago

With the so called prosecutorial discretion firmly in mind, it is always interesting to observe the sort of things our "Justice" department would rouse themselves for.

b215826• 4 years ago

The third-rate university (with a $1.81 billion endowment) where I am unfortunately studying for a PhD, closed its libraries in August 2021 for "renovation". If LibGen also shuts down (and becomes unavailable on Tor), it'll be hard for me to do research.

IAmNotAnAnt• 4 years ago

Just Go to singlelogin.me/

resuresu• 4 years ago

The US and it’s global jackboot world police.

mkolarek• 4 years ago

https://youtu.be/LasrD6SZkZk

ROTMetro3• 4 years ago

Last time I saw this many people justifying their illegal/immoral actions was when I was in prison. Criminal thinking is criminal thinking, and often starts with small justifications to tear down a persons own walls against such behavior, or to tear them down in others to pull them to your sway and away from society/prosocial behavior. We 8 billion people can not live together without certain tradeoffs, and those tradeoffs even apply to you, even when you can get around them. This thread is heartbreaking to me, having done so much work on myself to rebuild those walls of acceptable/non acceptable behaviors, to see such rot in the basic morality of such smart people.

It's 2022, there is more access to information and knowledge than ever in human history. Anyone that wants to make their knowledge or information free to the world can do that easily. These books were SPECIFICALLY not made free public knowledge. That you want them does not mean you are entitled to the choices of others in how they want choose to distribute their works. That they have enough value to you to make you want to steal them shows that there is more to that than simple 'knowledge everyone should be entitled to', because that knowledge is available on the internet in other forms.

Z-library founders arrested in Argentina

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