3 ms·

Libraries are the best they've have ever been in the history of civilization. Library-denialists pretend SciHub and LibGen and friends aren't "libraries", or ar

Libraries are the best they've have ever been in the history of civilization. Library-denialists pretend SciHub and LibGen and friends aren't "libraries", or are somehow inferior libraries to the authentic, irreplaceably-traditional experience of bicycling 90 minutes to the inner-city mold barracks where nodding hobos guard rubbish bins of yellowed paper—the approved, compliant source of knowledge. The wealth technology has created is staggering, like Andreessen was ranting about earlier this week in that emotional essay. Any human on the planet (almost) can flip through any book or paper ever written (almost), instantly at any moment—from their couch, from the back of a horse on the Mongolian Steppe, anywhere. An invisible cathedral of books spans the globe, and we're always standing before its glowing altar. A planetary-scale library. This is a wonder of the modern world and we ought to be glorifying it, extolling the ingenuity of human technology and the greatness of its civilization.

OfSanguineFire 3y ago
SciHub and LibGen is great. However, in my own field and adjacent ones, they are nowhere close to having complete coverage of publications from before the era when a publisher’s own digitized edition could be taken and uploaded; so many basic publications that are paper-only are missing. I myself have scanned tens of thousands of pages in order to fill in LibGen, but I have still barely scratched the surface. And while the non-fiction/scientific-papers side of LibGen can seem impressive, the fiction side is meagre. Literature in languages other than a few of the world’s major languages is missing, and poetry is especially badly represented even for major languages. In many places a real library offers some kind of inter-library loan service that can get you all those things that you won’t find – and perhaps will never find – on LibGen.
- perihelions 3y ago
  - "and perhaps will never find" That's cynical. All it takes is a bit of political change, and a national government could make an initiative to scan everything in every public library in their borders, straight to LibGen. As a national prestige project. Like the US Library of Congress, or that import customs policy the Library of Alexandria had. I think will happen one day. It's common-sense philanthropy for human civilization. We're just temporarily stuck in a dark age.
  - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
    You really think that the country that passed the DMCA and strongly pressures all its trading partners to enforce IP protection, is ever going to scan every book and upload it straight to a project that has already been associated with “piracy”? In any event, the prospect that in some enlightened future states are going to scan their library holdings, is little comfort for people in the present who rely on libraries to get all that wealth of knowledge unavailable in digital form.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - elashri 3y ago
    Considering that Alexandra the creator of sci-hub is a target for the FBI. I have little faith that what you are saying will ever occur in the US.
    - perihelions 3y ago
      MLK was also a target of the FBI and look how that turned out. Culture evolves. The arc of the moral universe is long.

OfSanguineFire 3y ago

SciHub and LibGen is great. However, in my own field and adjacent ones, they are nowhere close to having complete coverage of publications from before the era when a publisher’s own digitized edition could be taken and uploaded; so many basic publications that are paper-only are missing. I myself have scanned tens of thousands of pages in order to fill in LibGen, but I have still barely scratched the surface. And while the non-fiction/scientific-papers side of LibGen can seem impressive, the fiction side is meagre. Literature in languages other than a few of the world’s major languages is missing, and poetry is especially badly represented even for major languages. In many places a real library offers some kind of inter-library loan service that can get you all those things that you won’t find – and perhaps will never find – on LibGen.

perihelions 3y ago
- "and perhaps will never find" That's cynical. All it takes is a bit of political change, and a national government could make an initiative to scan everything in every public library in their borders, straight to LibGen. As a national prestige project. Like the US Library of Congress, or that import customs policy the Library of Alexandria had. I think will happen one day. It's common-sense philanthropy for human civilization. We're just temporarily stuck in a dark age.
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago
  You really think that the country that passed the DMCA and strongly pressures all its trading partners to enforce IP protection, is ever going to scan every book and upload it straight to a project that has already been associated with “piracy”? In any event, the prospect that in some enlightened future states are going to scan their library holdings, is little comfort for people in the present who rely on libraries to get all that wealth of knowledge unavailable in digital form.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- elashri 3y ago
  Considering that Alexandra the creator of sci-hub is a target for the FBI. I have little faith that what you are saying will ever occur in the US.
  - perihelions 3y ago
    MLK was also a target of the FBI and look how that turned out. Culture evolves. The arc of the moral universe is long.