An ebook reader plus the fiction section on LibGen (and its predecessor ebook-sharing websites) has allowed me to avoid spending money on novels for nearly a de

An ebook reader plus the fiction section on LibGen (and its predecessor ebook-sharing websites) has allowed me to avoid spending money on novels for nearly a decade now. Yes, often the novels I was reading were part of the modern canon (e.g. works by Nobel laureates) and ought to be freely available to all – I think everyone has a right to a basic cultural education, and copyright shouldn’t be enforced on things considered canonical. But other times, the novels I was reading were pretty inane genre fiction with little claim to cultural value, so yes, it was piracy for the sake of entertainment. Instead of trying to deny that LibGen is used for that, I think we might celebrate it.