9 ms·

Z-Library Aftermath Reveals the Feds Seized Dozens of Domain Names

131 points by mrzool 4y ago

1MachineElf 4y ago
Perhaps Z-Library would benefit by incorporating censotrship-resistant running via Rosen, which someone submitted here not long ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33541351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33541351
tyingq 4y ago
I've personally used sites like this as a sort of protest to what universities and authors did to the textbook market. You used to be able to buy used physical textbooks for classes at reasonable prices. They took advantage of the shift to digital by forcing arbitrary changes in edition numbers, solely to sell more books, or by requiring obscure, low-volume books, often written by the professor leading the class. With prices often exceeding $100.
- musicale 4y ago
  Used textbooks have been cleverly neutralized by the technique of bundling new copies with single-use codes for required online courseware. Adopting and requiring such courseware is somewhat abusive to students, but instructors are probably trying to save their own time and avoid reinventing the wheel. Personally I'd be happier if the textbooks and courseware access were sold separately.
- psychphysic 4y ago
  It would have been a godsend when I was still academic. This and sci-hub. The way they eviscerated the service makes clear that in general we need more robust web services. Tor is not ideal for this, onions are excellent and fill their niche really well. But we need something simpler here.
  - boxed 4y ago
    What is needed is a strong government for the people, by the people. Without that, it really doesn't matter what tech you can cobble together.
    - vegetablepotpie 4y ago
      That doesn’t happen because most people can’t or won’t participate in government. This is because many government meetings are held during the day, during working hours, usually in places far from the individuals affected. The people who do show up are independently wealthy, retirees, and people being paid to represent an organization. Representitive government doesn’t, and cannot represent the people.
      - somenameforme 4y ago
        The founding vision of the US was one where the further away government was from the people, the less impact it would have on their lives. The Federal government was to have an extremely limited role in society, largely tasked with things such as international relations. Your day to day would primarily be affect by your state, and ideally on downward with a further delegation of responsibilities getting closer and closer to you. This also helps curtail corruption. It is ostensibly easier to coerce/bribe/etc a state than a nation, but you have to do this for every single state and then try to keep them all under your thumb. A federal government may ostensibly be harder to corrupt, but once corrupted they can affect your whims on a national level and be relatively easier to maintain control of. This decentralization of power seems to be the easiest way to have a functioning political system. It's always the same decision. Centralization paired with selflessness, benevolence, and competence will trend towards utopia. Centralization paired with selfishness, greed, or incompetence will trend towards dystopia. Decentralization will always just trend towards mediocrity as a mish mash of the averages of society.
        AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
        It's almost as if the framers of the Constitution knew what they were doing when they created a decentralized federalized system and we've screwed it up pretty badly by centralizing power in the Federal Government.
- bombcar 4y ago
  One professor would hand out detailed sheets covering the differences between editions for anyone who had older ones, allowing a large range to be used.
  - II2II 4y ago
    Several of my professors did the same. Some went as far as saying the particular text book was not necessary, suggesting we can choose our own or recommending another. The important thing was the content of the course, with the source only being relevant for things like accuracy (which was rarely an issue for my field of study, at least for introductory texts which is what publishers tend to game). Just after I finished my studies things started becoming more difficult though, when additional instructional materials (graded tutorials, quizzes, and such) started going online.
- anxiously 4y ago
  I used to borrow a friends book and photo copy the entire book. It wasn’t ideal but it was often an order of magnitude cheaper than buying those crappy books.
- jhbadger 4y ago
  Oh, absurd prices for textbooks is not something that came from the digital shift. I had textbooks that were over $100 when I was an undergraduate. And that was in the late 1980s!
  - tyingq 4y ago
    Right, but there was a used textbook market that usually worked for me.
  - wlesieutre 4y ago
    But did it have a code for accessing online homework assignments that only worked once and made it useless to resell because next semester's students had to buy a new copy in order to submit homework? It's been a racket for a long time, but it's gotten much worse recently.
- lupire 4y ago
  How about boycotting colleges that are more focused on stealing your money than educating you?
  - banannaise 4y ago
    Voting with your wallet loses to the tragedy of the commons.
- runlevel1 4y ago
  Isn't it mainly publishers who are responsible for that? I think authors get a pittance. I recall a professor getting something like $600 to write a chapter in a molecular pathology textbook back in 2008.
- anonomousename 4y ago
  Now, you need an access code to do your homework. It costs more than the textbook, and cannot be shared, rented, copied, or sold when you’re done with it. The reason it is so expensive is because it comes with a “optimized” etextbook to help you when you’re stuck on homework. The average I’d say is around $120 Predatory practices all around.
dtx1 4y ago
I don't understand how zlibrary can still be up though. If the glowies can seize the domains can't they also seize the servers hosting the data?
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  They are outside the US jurisdiction. The full archive is also not that big (~30TB) so they are plenty of mirrors.
  - roel_v 4y ago
    "The full archive is also not that big (~30TB) so they are plenty of mirrors. " Like where? Zlibrary wasn't open for 'official' mirrors in the first place, and the 'unofficial mirror' hasn't had any seeders for its torrents since at least the seizure of the domains last week.
    - JustSomeNobody 4y ago
      There's a person who comments on some of the z-lib posts and they are the ones who archived z-lib (and some other sites). If I can find it, I'll edit this comment. Here. Her name is Anna. http://annas-blog.org/blog-introducing.html http://annas-blog.org/blog-introducing.html http://pilimi.org/ http://pilimi.org/
      - roel_v 4y ago
        Yah I know, it's the torrents on that site I was talking about.
    - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
      Zibrary is/was essentially a different frontend for libgen content. If you look for libgen archives, it is indeed mirrored.
      - roel_v 4y ago
viron 4y ago
Such a need for a service like z-library, the outside world sales prices does not make sense in my country, where the price of an ebook is equal to my half a month salary.
tiahura 4y ago
When you want somethin’ And you don’t want to pay for it…
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  It's not that people don't want to pay for it, it's that they can't.
  - 0x0000000 4y ago
    I mean, we should probably acknowledge it's a bit of both.
ahelwer 4y ago
So since this was done at the DNS level, not the hosting level, does this mean if you're running a pi-hole or AdGuardHome you can add some extra redirects for zlib to its actual IPs? I guess you could also just hardcode these in your computer's host file but then you have to do it for every device on your LAN. Assuming their IPs change somewhat frequently, is there any way to do this in an auto-updating way?
- malermeister 4y ago
  Even more interestingly, could somebody set up a "pirate DNS" for public use that would still resolve these (and other domains seized for similar reasons) while deferring to a "regular" DNS for everything else?
  - ahelwer 4y ago
    I guess in a way the Pirate Bay is just a pirate DNS for magnet links.
  - lupire 4y ago
    This is common https://www.lifewire.com/free-and-public-dns-servers-2626062 https://www.lifewire.com/free-and-public-dns-servers-2626062 But obviously any one that gets known for publicly providing banned domains would also get banned. So you need to maintain your own address tables, and get updates through private communications.
  - RobotToaster 4y ago
    OpenNIC is an alternative DNS root server that already has a .pirate domain. https://www.opennic.org/ https://www.opennic.org/
phyzome 4y ago
But the site's still up, still available over Tor, and still has domain names (in other jurisdictions) that point to it.
chris_wot 4y ago
I hate to say this, but the DNS system is the problem here. What are the alternatives?
- 2kwatts 4y ago
  So far I've seen OpenNIC[1] mentioned in this thread. I have it bookmarked because I think it's a really neat project. If there are others I'd like to know about them. 1: https://www.opennic.org/ https://www.opennic.org/
ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
> Not all known Z-Library domains are currently offline. The login portal ‘singlelogin.me’ and booksc.me, for example, remain online. These domains are registered through the Finnish company Sarek Oy, which is affiliated with Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde. Nice. Long fly the pirate flags.
timmg 4y ago
I had been using z-lib as a way of "format shifting" some of my books. I live in a small apartment. My books take up too much space. For some, I've found the PDF on z-lib and thrown out the hardcopy. I don't think that is immoral in any way. (And I'm pretty sure it's not illegal -- but IANAL).
- LorenPechtel 4y ago
  Yup, I've got a bunch of old books that have become an allergy issue for me. Replacing them with e-versions is not piracy no matter how I get the file.
peterweyand 4y ago
The servers hosting the data haven't been seized. Within a week there will be a dozen new domains for this information hosted out of Mozambique and Luxemburg or something. What a stupid waste of taxpayers money.
airstrike 4y ago
I understand IP laws, rewarding the authors, incentivizing future research, etc. etc. But intuitively and conceptually, there is a hypothetical scenario in which all of humanity's knowledge is ~free for anyone to access instantaneously and from anywhere. The current scenario in which every meaningful piece of academic output is heavily paywalled makes for a disheartening comparison.
oxff 4y ago
And now only libgen and archive.org remain, sad
user3939382 4y ago
Making no comment on ethics, it's amazing that we're able to create a multi-billion dollar industry over gatekeeping 30 TB of data. Obviously there are more books than that but I'm sure it's a long-tail situation.
- newfonewhodis 4y ago
  Wait till they find out about credit agencies.
frontrowseat 4y ago
I heard there were backup / archives. Are they already backup under a new domain?

131 points by mrzool 4y ago

Perhaps Z-Library would benefit by incorporating censotrship-resistant running via Rosen, which someone submitted here not long ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33541351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33541351

tyingq 4y ago

I've personally used sites like this as a sort of protest to what universities and authors did to the textbook market. You used to be able to buy used physical textbooks for classes at reasonable prices. They took advantage of the shift to digital by forcing arbitrary changes in edition numbers, solely to sell more books, or by requiring obscure, low-volume books, often written by the professor leading the class. With prices often exceeding $100.

musicale 4y ago
Used textbooks have been cleverly neutralized by the technique of bundling new copies with single-use codes for required online courseware. Adopting and requiring such courseware is somewhat abusive to students, but instructors are probably trying to save their own time and avoid reinventing the wheel. Personally I'd be happier if the textbooks and courseware access were sold separately.
psychphysic 4y ago
It would have been a godsend when I was still academic. This and sci-hub. The way they eviscerated the service makes clear that in general we need more robust web services. Tor is not ideal for this, onions are excellent and fill their niche really well. But we need something simpler here.
- boxed 4y ago
  What is needed is a strong government for the people, by the people. Without that, it really doesn't matter what tech you can cobble together.
  - vegetablepotpie 4y ago
    That doesn’t happen because most people can’t or won’t participate in government. This is because many government meetings are held during the day, during working hours, usually in places far from the individuals affected. The people who do show up are independently wealthy, retirees, and people being paid to represent an organization. Representitive government doesn’t, and cannot represent the people.
    - somenameforme 4y ago
      The founding vision of the US was one where the further away government was from the people, the less impact it would have on their lives. The Federal government was to have an extremely limited role in society, largely tasked with things such as international relations. Your day to day would primarily be affect by your state, and ideally on downward with a further delegation of responsibilities getting closer and closer to you. This also helps curtail corruption. It is ostensibly easier to coerce/bribe/etc a state than a nation, but you have to do this for every single state and then try to keep them all under your thumb. A federal government may ostensibly be harder to corrupt, but once corrupted they can affect your whims on a national level and be relatively easier to maintain control of. This decentralization of power seems to be the easiest way to have a functioning political system. It's always the same decision. Centralization paired with selflessness, benevolence, and competence will trend towards utopia. Centralization paired with selfishness, greed, or incompetence will trend towards dystopia. Decentralization will always just trend towards mediocrity as a mish mash of the averages of society.
      - AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
        It's almost as if the framers of the Constitution knew what they were doing when they created a decentralized federalized system and we've screwed it up pretty badly by centralizing power in the Federal Government.
bombcar 4y ago
One professor would hand out detailed sheets covering the differences between editions for anyone who had older ones, allowing a large range to be used.
- II2II 4y ago
  Several of my professors did the same. Some went as far as saying the particular text book was not necessary, suggesting we can choose our own or recommending another. The important thing was the content of the course, with the source only being relevant for things like accuracy (which was rarely an issue for my field of study, at least for introductory texts which is what publishers tend to game). Just after I finished my studies things started becoming more difficult though, when additional instructional materials (graded tutorials, quizzes, and such) started going online.
anxiously 4y ago
I used to borrow a friends book and photo copy the entire book. It wasn’t ideal but it was often an order of magnitude cheaper than buying those crappy books.
jhbadger 4y ago
Oh, absurd prices for textbooks is not something that came from the digital shift. I had textbooks that were over $100 when I was an undergraduate. And that was in the late 1980s!
- tyingq 4y ago
  Right, but there was a used textbook market that usually worked for me.
- wlesieutre 4y ago
  But did it have a code for accessing online homework assignments that only worked once and made it useless to resell because next semester's students had to buy a new copy in order to submit homework? It's been a racket for a long time, but it's gotten much worse recently.
lupire 4y ago
How about boycotting colleges that are more focused on stealing your money than educating you?
- banannaise 4y ago
  Voting with your wallet loses to the tragedy of the commons.
runlevel1 4y ago
Isn't it mainly publishers who are responsible for that? I think authors get a pittance. I recall a professor getting something like $600 to write a chapter in a molecular pathology textbook back in 2008.
anonomousename 4y ago
Now, you need an access code to do your homework. It costs more than the textbook, and cannot be shared, rented, copied, or sold when you’re done with it. The reason it is so expensive is because it comes with a “optimized” etextbook to help you when you’re stuck on homework. The average I’d say is around $120 Predatory practices all around.

dtx1 4y ago

I don't understand how zlibrary can still be up though. If the glowies can seize the domains can't they also seize the servers hosting the data?

WastingMyTime89 4y ago
They are outside the US jurisdiction. The full archive is also not that big (~30TB) so they are plenty of mirrors.
- roel_v 4y ago
  "The full archive is also not that big (~30TB) so they are plenty of mirrors. " Like where? Zlibrary wasn't open for 'official' mirrors in the first place, and the 'unofficial mirror' hasn't had any seeders for its torrents since at least the seizure of the domains last week.
  - JustSomeNobody 4y ago
    There's a person who comments on some of the z-lib posts and they are the ones who archived z-lib (and some other sites). If I can find it, I'll edit this comment. Here. Her name is Anna. http://annas-blog.org/blog-introducing.html http://annas-blog.org/blog-introducing.html http://pilimi.org/ http://pilimi.org/
    - roel_v 4y ago
      Yah I know, it's the torrents on that site I was talking about.
  - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
    Zibrary is/was essentially a different frontend for libgen content. If you look for libgen archives, it is indeed mirrored.
    - roel_v 4y ago

viron 4y ago

Such a need for a service like z-library, the outside world sales prices does not make sense in my country, where the price of an ebook is equal to my half a month salary.

tiahura 4y ago

When you want somethin’ And you don’t want to pay for it…

Cthulhu_ 4y ago
It's not that people don't want to pay for it, it's that they can't.
- 0x0000000 4y ago
  I mean, we should probably acknowledge it's a bit of both.

ahelwer 4y ago

So since this was done at the DNS level, not the hosting level, does this mean if you're running a pi-hole or AdGuardHome you can add some extra redirects for zlib to its actual IPs? I guess you could also just hardcode these in your computer's host file but then you have to do it for every device on your LAN. Assuming their IPs change somewhat frequently, is there any way to do this in an auto-updating way?

malermeister 4y ago
Even more interestingly, could somebody set up a "pirate DNS" for public use that would still resolve these (and other domains seized for similar reasons) while deferring to a "regular" DNS for everything else?
- ahelwer 4y ago
  I guess in a way the Pirate Bay is just a pirate DNS for magnet links.
- lupire 4y ago
  This is common https://www.lifewire.com/free-and-public-dns-servers-2626062 https://www.lifewire.com/free-and-public-dns-servers-2626062 But obviously any one that gets known for publicly providing banned domains would also get banned. So you need to maintain your own address tables, and get updates through private communications.
- RobotToaster 4y ago
  OpenNIC is an alternative DNS root server that already has a .pirate domain. https://www.opennic.org/ https://www.opennic.org/

phyzome 4y ago

But the site's still up, still available over Tor, and still has domain names (in other jurisdictions) that point to it.

chris_wot 4y ago

I hate to say this, but the DNS system is the problem here. What are the alternatives?

2kwatts 4y ago
So far I've seen OpenNIC[1] mentioned in this thread. I have it bookmarked because I think it's a really neat project. If there are others I'd like to know about them. 1: https://www.opennic.org/ https://www.opennic.org/

ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago

> Not all known Z-Library domains are currently offline. The login portal ‘singlelogin.me’ and booksc.me, for example, remain online. These domains are registered through the Finnish company Sarek Oy, which is affiliated with Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde. Nice. Long fly the pirate flags.

timmg 4y ago

I had been using z-lib as a way of "format shifting" some of my books. I live in a small apartment. My books take up too much space. For some, I've found the PDF on z-lib and thrown out the hardcopy. I don't think that is immoral in any way. (And I'm pretty sure it's not illegal -- but IANAL).

LorenPechtel 4y ago
Yup, I've got a bunch of old books that have become an allergy issue for me. Replacing them with e-versions is not piracy no matter how I get the file.

peterweyand 4y ago

The servers hosting the data haven't been seized. Within a week there will be a dozen new domains for this information hosted out of Mozambique and Luxemburg or something. What a stupid waste of taxpayers money.

airstrike 4y ago

I understand IP laws, rewarding the authors, incentivizing future research, etc. etc. But intuitively and conceptually, there is a hypothetical scenario in which all of humanity's knowledge is ~free for anyone to access instantaneously and from anywhere. The current scenario in which every meaningful piece of academic output is heavily paywalled makes for a disheartening comparison.

oxff 4y ago

And now only libgen and archive.org remain, sad

user3939382 4y ago

Making no comment on ethics, it's amazing that we're able to create a multi-billion dollar industry over gatekeeping 30 TB of data. Obviously there are more books than that but I'm sure it's a long-tail situation.

newfonewhodis 4y ago
Wait till they find out about credit agencies.

frontrowseat 4y ago

I heard there were backup / archives. Are they already backup under a new domain?