59 ms·

Z-library founders arrested in Argentina

581 points by cft 4y ago

bitwize 4y ago
Copyright laws actually get enforced! Who'd've thunk?
skjoldr 4y ago
A reminder that Z-library is still available through Tor: http://zlibrary24tuxziyiyfr7zd46ytefdqbqd2axkmxm4o5374ptpc52fad.onion/ http://zlibrary24tuxziyiyfr7zd46ytefdqbqd2axkmxm4o5374ptpc52... I doubt it took just two people to handle the entire project.
- Synaesthesia 4y ago
  There's also library genesis https://libgen.rs https://libgen.rs
henry_viii 4y 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 4y 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_ 4y ago
This makes me worried about LibGen. It would be an incredible loss to humanity to see these libraries go for good.
phpisatrash 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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"?
    - kennend3 4y ago
xtracto 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
  Compensated by whom?
- dmitryminkovsky 4y 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.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dartharva 4y 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.
lofaszvanitt 4y 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 4y ago
Wish them luck. Zlib was a godsend. Let's hope they won't be extradited.
sharperguy 4y ago
Burn down the library of Alexandria because free access to information is too inconvenient
prisoner655321 4y 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.
auggierose 4y 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?
tartoran 4y 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 4y 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?
- wellareyousure 4y 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 4y ago
  There's IPFS
- chis 4y 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 4y ago
Very sad day for world’s education. They trying so hard to keep knowledge only for rich
shahidkarimi 4y ago
I will make it live again.
dartharva 4y ago
Too many Copyright defenders here, mandatory "the intellectual property oxymoron" read: http://harmful.cat-v.org/economics/intellectual_property/ http://harmful.cat-v.org/economics/intellectual_property/
- SpelingBeeChamp 4y 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.
  - dartharva 4y ago
    Apologies for that. Please ignore the tone in case it appears inflammatory, that was indeed not my intention.
ketzu 4y 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.
jiveturkey 4y 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 4y 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 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/506
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Thanks very much for turning this up.
mrkramer 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
I thought Fahrenheit 451 was supposed to be fiction...
p1peridine 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
Related: Feds Seize One of the Largest Sites for Pirated Books and Articles, Z-Library - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33570539 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 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33460970 - Nov 2022 (517 comments) Z Library - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29365627 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26355778 - March 2021 (51 comments)
35amxn35 4y 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 4y ago
  You might even say it's Biblical.
madars 4y ago
Docket: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/65760207/united-states-v-napolsky/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/65760207/united-states-...
SergeAx 4y 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?
dredmorbius 4y 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-sales-in-the-us-since-1992/ 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/ https://www.census.gov/popclock/>), 2.6 per household (<https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/HSD410220 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-series/historical-income-households/h05.xls https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/time-ser...>).
mattymf 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
Links for legal defense appreciated.
jeegsy 4y 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 4y 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.
AntiRemoteWork 4y ago
IAmNotAnAnt 4y ago
Just Go to singlelogin.me/
resuresu 4y ago
The US and it’s global jackboot world police.
- mkolarek 4y ago
  https://youtu.be/LasrD6SZkZk https://youtu.be/LasrD6SZkZk
ROTMetro 4y 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.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
elashri 4y 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
- jerojero 4y 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?
  - fragmede 4y 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.
    - jerojero 4y ago
      Z-library was popular amongst everyone, hackernews is a really niche website. But I believe with that website going down people will start looking for alternatives. If everything fails, we can always go back to download books through IRC.
- gnrlst 4y 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"
- fragmede 4y 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.
  - 4y ago
jhvkjhk 4y ago
They are so young! Does anyone know what will happen to them after the arrestment? I sincerely think they are doing charity.
- blakblakarak 4y ago
  No doubt they'll be chucked in a supermax prison in the arse-end of nowhere for fifty years.
  - nathancahill 4y 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.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  > I sincerely think they are doing charity By limiting downloads (artificial scarcity)? By charging for pirated works?
  - inshadows 4y ago
    They charge for bandwidth, server cycles and rent.
    - andsoitis 4y ago
      So they don’t profit?
      - inshadows 4y ago
        Who cares. Don't be a free-loader.
        skyyler 4y ago
        I find it interesting that zlib is supposed to be compensated for their servers but the authors aren't supposed to be compensated for their writings. Personally, I'm in support of zlib / libgen / other illegalist libraries. But it is kind of funny to see where the morality lies on this.
hd4 4y ago
Ah yes, actual hardened dangerous criminals finally facing justice.
- drummer 4y ago
  I couldnt sleep for months with those two running around free knowing they could strike at any time
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
gustavorg 4y 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.
- blahblah1234567 4y 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-daughter-leading-jeffrey-epstein-case-2019-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/maurene-comey-james-comey-da...
- gyog 4y 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.
  - voakbasda 4y ago
    And that right there is why I support the “no justice, no peace” movement. Long live the revolution.
  - consumer451 4y ago
    How is Biden tied to Epstein? I must have missed that one.
    - whimsicalism 4y ago
      Bill Clinton had ties, I don't know of any with Biden.
- markles 4y ago
  And how many people went to prison over the crash of 2008?
null_object 4y 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.
- connorgutman 4y 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 4y 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.
reisse 4y 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?
- roel_v 4y 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 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.
  - dartharva 4y ago
    Here it is: https://annas-archive.org/ https://annas-archive.org/ I sincerely hope Anna stays safe though. They can (and will) come for her and her team too.
- hggh 4y ago
  https://ia801505.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/17/items/pilimi-zlib-meta/pilimi-zlib-torrents.zip https://ia801505.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/17...
- gadders 4y ago
  Apparently yes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32972923 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32972923
- adamors 4y ago
  As Russian nationals, their choices are rather limited at this time.
  - keewee7 4y 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.
keewee7 4y 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.
- droopyEyelids 4y 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 4y 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?
    - droopyEyelids 4y ago
      but that's just something you made up! you've never seen any evidence they're profitable
    - idoubtit 4y ago
      I've used both libgen and z-library to search for books over the last year. Maybe a hundred of books, mostly old fiction works (translated) in English and French (authors like Joseph Roth or Aleksandr Kouprin). Z-lib had much more results than libgen. I've read several times that z-library is a fork of libgen and that their contents are similar, but that's not my experience at all.
- AkshatJ27 4y 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 http://annas-blog.org/blog-3x-new-books.html)
DoingIsLearning 4y 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-sales-in-the-us-since-1992/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/197710/annual-book-store... [1] https://www.epi.org/press/wage-theft-costs-american-workers-50-billion/ https://www.epi.org/press/wage-theft-costs-american-workers-...
- lc9er 4y 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 4y 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.
    - comprev 4y ago
      Government may get more revenue but the individual politicians get influenced through financial means provided by the companies stealing the wages. Corporates want their pound of flesh for lobbying expenses.
    - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
      One party wants a disenfranchised base that will keep voting for them. If they are made whole by the government they might start having wrongthink.
    - 4y ago
trabant00 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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.
mirzap 4y 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.
- technoooooost 4y ago
  you must be fun at parties
- pkoird 4y 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.
  - arglebargle123 4y ago
    It was 10 downloads per day from the website and then a further 10 from the telegram bot too.
  - deathgripsss 4y 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.
  - mirzap 4y 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.
    - pkoird 4y ago
      I understand what you're saying but if you look at the effects alone (and not the means), it seems well justified. Their increased revenue allowed them to provide more and more (than LibGen at least) books to the users free of charge. I do not know the difficulties involved in mirroring Z-Library, but there seems to be someone who did it recently and posted to HN before the site went down.
nivenkos 4y 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.
- dartharva 4y 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.
  - nivenkos 4y 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.
- djmips 4y ago
  What about a Spotify for books?
- andsoitis 4y ago
  > universal revenue-sharing programme Run by whom? The UN?
- prox 4y 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.
woadwarrior01 4y ago
Now, do SBF.
- deleted 4y ago
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- deleted 4y ago
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revskill 4y ago
First time heard about Z-library. The home page design seems like a scam page though.
- slbtty 4y ago
  It is a gate to the great knowledge.
ddevault 4y ago
Man, fuck this.
trabant00 4y 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.
- dartharva 4y 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 4y ago
The bizarre thing is that they asked for donations as Amazon gift cards! Surely Amazon could have blocked them?
- dewey 4y 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 4y ago
TorrentFreak report has some extra details - https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-indicts-two-russians-for-running-the-z-library-piracy-ring221117/ https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-indicts-two-russians-for-runnin...
lakomen 4y ago
1st time I heard about it. I'll try to find the tor site.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  An alternative is Library Genesis.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hknmtt 4y ago
"The pair was arrested on November 3, 2022 in Cordoba, Argentina at the request of the United States" ...
uni_baconcat 4y 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.
- ApolloFortyNine 4y 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.
- prox 4y 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.
josh_fyi 4y 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://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/141915/ https://libgen.is/search.php?req=Joshua%20Fox&column[]=author https://libgen.is/search.php?req=Joshua%20Fox&column[]=autho...
- sitkack 4y 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 4y ago
    three
- Balgair 4y 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.
  - duxup 4y ago
    Is there much risk just in reading a cracked book!
  - stubish 4y 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.
codedokode 4y 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.
stevespang 4y ago
wafriedemann 4y ago
Well, they would be fine if they had studied at Stanford. Crooks don't study at Stanford.
SunlightEdge 4y 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.
generationP 4y 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 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.
- ketzu 4y 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 4y 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.
    - ketzu 4y ago
      Just to prevent misunderstanding: I have no opinion on 8.3% profit sharing agreements being okay or not. I just noted that I think the tweet is putting the focus on the wrong part. I have no opinion, because I have way too little info. The only info I am fairly certain about is authors are not forced into traditional publishing.
jl6 4y 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.

581 points by cft 4y ago

A reminder that Z-library is still available through Tor: http://zlibrary24tuxziyiyfr7zd46ytefdqbqd2axkmxm4o5374ptpc52fad.onion/ http://zlibrary24tuxziyiyfr7zd46ytefdqbqd2axkmxm4o5374ptpc52... I doubt it took just two people to handle the entire project.

Synaesthesia 4y ago
There's also library genesis https://libgen.rs https://libgen.rs

henry_viii 4y 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 4y 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_ 4y ago

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

phpisatrash 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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"?
  - kennend3 4y ago

xtracto 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
Compensated by whom?
dmitryminkovsky 4y 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.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dartharva 4y 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.

lofaszvanitt 4y 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 4y ago

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

sharperguy 4y ago

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

prisoner655321 4y 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.

auggierose 4y 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?

tartoran 4y 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 4y 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?

wellareyousure 4y 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 4y ago
There's IPFS
chis 4y 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 4y ago

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

shahidkarimi 4y ago

I will make it live again.

dartharva 4y ago

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

SpelingBeeChamp 4y 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.
- dartharva 4y ago
  Apologies for that. Please ignore the tone in case it appears inflammatory, that was indeed not my intention.

ketzu 4y 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.

jiveturkey 4y 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 4y 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 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/506

dredmorbius 4y ago
Thanks very much for turning this up.

mrkramer 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago

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

p1peridine 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago

Related: Feds Seize One of the Largest Sites for Pirated Books and Articles, Z-Library - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33570539 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 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33460970 - Nov 2022 (517 comments) Z Library - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29365627 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26355778 - March 2021 (51 comments)

35amxn35 4y 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 4y ago
You might even say it's Biblical.

madars 4y ago

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

SergeAx 4y 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?

dredmorbius 4y 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-sales-in-the-us-since-1992/ 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/ https://www.census.gov/popclock/>), 2.6 per household (<https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/HSD410220 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-series/historical-income-households/h05.xls https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/time-ser...>).

mattymf 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago

Links for legal defense appreciated.

jeegsy 4y 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 4y 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.

AntiRemoteWork 4y ago

IAmNotAnAnt 4y ago

Just Go to singlelogin.me/

resuresu 4y ago

The US and it’s global jackboot world police.

mkolarek 4y ago
https://youtu.be/LasrD6SZkZk https://youtu.be/LasrD6SZkZk

ROTMetro 4y 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.

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elashri 4y 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

jerojero 4y 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?
- fragmede 4y 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.
  - jerojero 4y ago
    Z-library was popular amongst everyone, hackernews is a really niche website. But I believe with that website going down people will start looking for alternatives. If everything fails, we can always go back to download books through IRC.
gnrlst 4y 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"
fragmede 4y 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.
- 4y ago

jhvkjhk 4y ago

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

blakblakarak 4y ago
No doubt they'll be chucked in a supermax prison in the arse-end of nowhere for fifty years.
- nathancahill 4y 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.
andsoitis 4y ago
> I sincerely think they are doing charity By limiting downloads (artificial scarcity)? By charging for pirated works?
- inshadows 4y ago
  They charge for bandwidth, server cycles and rent.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    So they don’t profit?
    - inshadows 4y ago
      Who cares. Don't be a free-loader.
      - skyyler 4y ago
        I find it interesting that zlib is supposed to be compensated for their servers but the authors aren't supposed to be compensated for their writings. Personally, I'm in support of zlib / libgen / other illegalist libraries. But it is kind of funny to see where the morality lies on this.

hd4 4y ago

Ah yes, actual hardened dangerous criminals finally facing justice.

drummer 4y ago
I couldnt sleep for months with those two running around free knowing they could strike at any time

deleted 4y ago

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gustavorg 4y 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.

blahblah1234567 4y 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-daughter-leading-jeffrey-epstein-case-2019-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/maurene-comey-james-comey-da...
gyog 4y 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.
- voakbasda 4y ago
  And that right there is why I support the “no justice, no peace” movement. Long live the revolution.
- consumer451 4y ago
  How is Biden tied to Epstein? I must have missed that one.
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    Bill Clinton had ties, I don't know of any with Biden.
markles 4y ago
And how many people went to prison over the crash of 2008?

null_object 4y 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.

connorgutman 4y 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 4y 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.

reisse 4y 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?

roel_v 4y 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 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.
- dartharva 4y ago
  Here it is: https://annas-archive.org/ https://annas-archive.org/ I sincerely hope Anna stays safe though. They can (and will) come for her and her team too.
hggh 4y ago
https://ia801505.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/17/items/pilimi-zlib-meta/pilimi-zlib-torrents.zip https://ia801505.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/17...
gadders 4y ago
Apparently yes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32972923 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32972923
adamors 4y ago
As Russian nationals, their choices are rather limited at this time.
- keewee7 4y 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.

keewee7 4y 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.

droopyEyelids 4y 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 4y 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?
  - droopyEyelids 4y ago
    but that's just something you made up! you've never seen any evidence they're profitable
  - idoubtit 4y ago
    I've used both libgen and z-library to search for books over the last year. Maybe a hundred of books, mostly old fiction works (translated) in English and French (authors like Joseph Roth or Aleksandr Kouprin). Z-lib had much more results than libgen. I've read several times that z-library is a fork of libgen and that their contents are similar, but that's not my experience at all.
AkshatJ27 4y 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 http://annas-blog.org/blog-3x-new-books.html)

DoingIsLearning 4y 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-sales-in-the-us-since-1992/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/197710/annual-book-store... [1] https://www.epi.org/press/wage-theft-costs-american-workers-50-billion/ https://www.epi.org/press/wage-theft-costs-american-workers-...

lc9er 4y 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 4y 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.
  - comprev 4y ago
    Government may get more revenue but the individual politicians get influenced through financial means provided by the companies stealing the wages. Corporates want their pound of flesh for lobbying expenses.
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    One party wants a disenfranchised base that will keep voting for them. If they are made whole by the government they might start having wrongthink.
  - 4y ago

trabant00 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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.

mirzap 4y 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.

technoooooost 4y ago
you must be fun at parties
pkoird 4y 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.
- arglebargle123 4y ago
  It was 10 downloads per day from the website and then a further 10 from the telegram bot too.
- deathgripsss 4y 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.
- mirzap 4y 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.
  - pkoird 4y ago
    I understand what you're saying but if you look at the effects alone (and not the means), it seems well justified. Their increased revenue allowed them to provide more and more (than LibGen at least) books to the users free of charge. I do not know the difficulties involved in mirroring Z-Library, but there seems to be someone who did it recently and posted to HN before the site went down.

nivenkos 4y 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.

dartharva 4y 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.
- nivenkos 4y 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.
djmips 4y ago
What about a Spotify for books?
andsoitis 4y ago
> universal revenue-sharing programme Run by whom? The UN?
prox 4y 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.

woadwarrior01 4y ago

Now, do SBF.

deleted 4y ago
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revskill 4y ago

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

slbtty 4y ago
It is a gate to the great knowledge.

ddevault 4y ago

Man, fuck this.

trabant00 4y 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.

dartharva 4y 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 4y ago

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

dewey 4y 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 4y ago

TorrentFreak report has some extra details - https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-indicts-two-russians-for-running-the-z-library-piracy-ring221117/ https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-indicts-two-russians-for-runnin...

lakomen 4y ago

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

dredmorbius 4y ago
An alternative is Library Genesis.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

hknmtt 4y ago

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

uni_baconcat 4y 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.

ApolloFortyNine 4y 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.
prox 4y 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.

josh_fyi 4y 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://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/141915/ https://libgen.is/search.php?req=Joshua%20Fox&column[]=author https://libgen.is/search.php?req=Joshua%20Fox&column[]=autho...

sitkack 4y 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 4y ago
  three
Balgair 4y 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.
- duxup 4y ago
  Is there much risk just in reading a cracked book!
- stubish 4y 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.

codedokode 4y 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.

stevespang 4y ago

wafriedemann 4y ago

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

SunlightEdge 4y 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.

generationP 4y 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 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.

ketzu 4y 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 4y 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.
  - ketzu 4y ago
    Just to prevent misunderstanding: I have no opinion on 8.3% profit sharing agreements being okay or not. I just noted that I think the tweet is putting the focus on the wrong part. I have no opinion, because I have way too little info. The only info I am fairly certain about is authors are not forced into traditional publishing.

jl6 4y 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.