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Z-Library admins "escape house arrest" after judge approves U.S. extradition
- luna4151 2y ago[dead]
- Kim_Bruning 2y agoWhy is it that Russian citizens are the most important preservers of Western culture now? %-/
- jasonjayr 2y agoThat's easy: Russia is leaning pretty hard anti-west right now, and if any of it's citizens are doing anything to annoy anything from the west, they will cheerfully let it continue so long as it doesn't cause them problems at home.
- sampa 2y ago[flagged]
- daedrdev 2y agoAs opposed to your alternate view that is...? I feel like its objective fact that Russia is doing whatever is can to undermine the west, considering that they are currently committing industrial sabotage in Europe on a large scale.
- sampa 2y agoas if industrial sabotage was invented in Russia
- lesuorac 2y agoVery unclear how this is related to the previous comments about why Russia would be preserving Western culture.
- jasonvorhe 2y agoBecause it's also part of their culture.
- exe34 2y agowe should send them agile.
- HenryBemis 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- waffleiron 2y agoThats a CIA playbook you are referring to: https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/SimpleSabotage.pdf https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- TrapLord_Rhodo 2y agoThey were doing this from argentina, not russia. I think the OP's comment is meant that the view everyone aligns to a "Nationstate" is simplistic. The fact that the press release specifically mentions their russian is some kind of political doublespeak. The true lesson here is that hackers can come from every nationality and that individuals who are trying to enlighten and enrich society will be persecuted by the powers that be. It's a story as old as history itself.
- kevinh 2y agoThey were vacationing in Argentina, not living there.
- TrapLord_Rhodo 2y agoHeavy quotes when a hacker says that i'm sure. Proper opsec in that line of work requires alot of "Vacationing". Also, your comment still completly ignores the main point; Regardless of the local, the merits of extradition here are wild. How can you charge someone for copyright law when the infridgment was never conducted in the united states?
- themoonisachees 2y agoUS doctrine says that the perpetrator can be anywhere, they're getting sued near the victim. Most courts in the world have similar doctrine, as that allows suing any foreign national you can extradite to you instead of having to e.g. sue in a Chinese court.
- carlosjobim 2y agoBook piracy is an old Russian movement to evade censorship, called samizdat, and these shadow libraries have their roots in that movement. It is an anti-soviet tradition, and probably has nothing to with wanting to cause economic harm to publishers.
- pyuser583 2y agoJRR Tolkein's publisher hired a lawyer to defend his copyright in the USSR. The case failed.. But what exactly did they want? The KGB to send Tolkein fans to the Gulag?
- ogurechny 2y agoPost-revolutionary Soviet state declared that private property was a sin, but life demanded immediate amendments that protected some rights for 5-25 years, depending on the content. That was inside the country, as international relations were broken. As USSR turned into a “normal” corporate state with a twist, and began having economic relations with other “normal” Capitalist thugs, it started having minimal bilateral agreements that allowed things to move. Post-war reforms in local laws extended copyright terms inside the Soviet Bloc, and made them more similar to the Western agreements (even though licensing deals though the Iron Curtain were exceptions). Finally, in 1973 USSR joined Universal Copyright Convention of 1952, at the latest possible moment its old terms were still in effect. As a result, everything published before 1973 could be used on old terms, — in particular, translations did not need explicit authorization. Of course, that hurt the Soviet writers in the same manner, but not a lot of people wanted to read Socialist Realist stories about imaginary workers of imaginary factories. As for everything published after 1973, All-Union Agency of Author's Rights handled and controlled all trans-border copyright transfers both ways, and dealt with the money — until the last years of Soviet Union, when free press, and private contracts with publishers made them irrelevant. A translation of “Hobbit” was published in 1976, a print run of 100 000. An abridged version of “The Fellowship of the Ring” was published in 1982 and 1983, both runs of 100 000. https://fantlab.ru/autor19/alleditions https://fantlab.ru/autor19/alleditions Even with the arbitrary government-defined ruble exchange rate, they probably wanted to collect at least some money. Afterwards, post-Soviet countries joined the worldwide copyright agreements. One of the negative outcomes of those Soviet and post-Soviet copyright extensions made to align local and global law was that previously public domain content (like photos, which newspapers and archives often didn't even bother to track properly) became copyrighted once again, which usually put it into a limbo of orphan works, and prevented re-distribution of old products containing it.
- Dudelander 2y agoI must admit it is rather comfortable to have an accurate view of the world. It's much more profitable than being enmeshed in a bunch of conspiracy theories.
- jasonjayr 2y agoIt's actually super uncomfortable realizing just how effective this is at destablizing things. As a network guy watching how much bad activity to my US-based servers comes from regions that are not friendly with the US right now, it's downright upsetting. We should be all working together and not against each other. But the world is not simple, and people have complex, and sometimes selfish motivations.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- throwup238 2y agoI don't think it has much to do with that. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, bootleg tapes copied from friend to friend was the only way my parents had to share banned music. After the collapse, we were priced out of Western content by a weak economy so that black market morphed into a state-tolerated industry selling pirated tapes and eventually CDs and DVDs. Any time I'd go back to visit in the last few decades, I'd buy movies, entire discographies, and video games for a few dollars a piece from market stalls and specialized stores that sold nothing but pirated content. Ignoring foreign copyright was a survival mechanism and by this point, it's almost culturally ingrained.
- qball 2y ago>I don't think it has much to do with that. Sure it does; Russian police do nothing about credit card theft because (and to the point that) that money is ultimately coming out of Western pockets (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Chp12sEnWk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Chp12sEnWk). Same as the North Koreans with their industrial-level counterfeiting of USD (to name one example), for the same reasons. Might as well be an unofficial letter of marque.
- throwup238 2y agoThe OP originally asked: > Why is it that Russian citizens are the most important preservers of Western culture now? What do credit card thieves and counterfeiters have to do with it? Are credit card thieves preservers of Western culture now?
- nullindividual 2y agoWindows 95 bootlegging was extremely prevalent. Piracy in Russia is nothing new. From the AP Archive - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR3wtulOJWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR3wtulOJWU
- kelipso 2y ago20 years ago you could find physical bootleg markets in almost every big Asian city. Nowadays it's probably all in torrents, Telegram, etc. I think copyright stuff is only really enforced in western countries.
- generationP 2y agoThe Eastern European (not just Russian) book scanning scene seems to have started in the early 2000s, back before the anti-Western turn. Z-Lib is newer, from the 2010s(?), definitely predating the current meaning of Z.
- xnyan 2y agoI don't have any data to back it up, but I've never seen as strong a reading culture as I did in my two years living in Russia and East Ukraine. Very strong cultural respect for books and the written word. Also, zero enforcement of western copyright law, or at least that's what I've observed.
- mandmandam 2y agoIs it because the West has been heading full-tilt into a mish-mash of every dystopia we were ever warned about for decades? Whatever reason Russians have to preserve humanities culture, it is entirely the West's fault that we are not looking after it ourselves. That wasn't Russia, or China; it was the yacht class and their hirelings in law, politics and media.
- skjoldr 2y agoIronic considering the Russian oligarchs have the most blinged out yacht fleet
- mandmandam 2y agoWhy do you think it's ironic for another highly unequal, exploitative, racist, colonialist empire to also have a yacht class? Russia's entire GDP is less than that of New York. I highly doubt they own more stupid and planet-destroying assets than US oligarchs, or the dictators we prop up. Feel free to bring evidence of otherwise though.
- abdullahkhalids 2y agoThroughout the cold war, the Russians/USSR had to obtain/steal books and scientific articles from the US and its allies to keep up. This probably created the culture that copyright doesn't matter. Plus communism is about sharing with your community. It's probably still very hard for Russians to get these materials, so the culture and will of stealing and sharing is still there.
- Dalewyn 2y ago>Plus communism is about sharing with your community. Adding on to this, my impression of Russian culture, observing both historically and today, is that Might Makes Right(tm) is a core tenet. That is to say, if you can do it and get away with it you are justice. The two mentioned in the article clearly are (were) getting away with it, so as far as they are concerned they are right and everyone else is wrong. Russians don't care about ink on paper unless it can literally pickup an AK-47 and shoot them.
- u8080 2y agoWhole thread is wholesome, but this is pure "Wind is generated by wind generators" rationalization.
- braincat31415 2y agoThere is an amazing amount of nonsense posted on this thread. I cannot speak for all areas of science, but at least in math and physics the paper copies of most Western research journals were available in central public libraries. That flow of information was bidirectional as works published by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR were translated and published in the US and Europe. There was a considerable effort to translate English language books into Russian and publish them. I cannot vouch for all the publishers, but I know for a fact that at least MIR publisher paid royalties on sales of translated books, although I am sure they did extra printing press runs off the books, so to speak. These days, at least before the war started... c'mon, you can't be serious.
- crest 2y agoBecause Russian "offerings" are lacking in comparison, but they don't have access to a lot of it.
- toastercat 2y agoYeah, especially films from that Andrei Tarkovsky guy. I mean, yawwwwwn, right?
- carlosjobim 2y agoRussian literature is considered part of the best in the world. As for scientific papers, I don't think they're behind either.
- generationP 2y agoIf I am to guess: - large academic population and high general education - a tradition of collecting banned and bootlegged content, particularly Western (samizdat, magnitizdat) - lack of resources to get things legally (e.g. university subscriptions) - a culture of hacking and tinkering (the best known book scanning middleware, like ScanTailor and ScanKromsator and various djvu tools, comes from Russian hobbyist programmers). Also applies to adjacent countries like Ukraine.
- matrix87 2y ago> According to a 2016 OECD estimate, 54% of Russia's adults (25- to 64-year-olds) have attained tertiary education, giving Russia the second-highest attainment of tertiary education among 35 OECD member countries. [0] Wonder why, was it a thing before the Soviets? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Russia
- krasin 2y ago> Wonder why, was it a thing before the Soviets? Before Soviets, Russian population was largely uneducated; could not read or write. Soviets immediately started a country-wide educational campaign, Likbez: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likbez https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likbez Soviets did many things, some good and some very bad. But their push for free & universal education has been good.
- generationP 2y agoI consider the wide-scale and fairly high-quality scientific education system to be the only genuine upside of Soviet communism. Admittedly, part of its success was the fact that it offered many people the only way to the middle or upper class (the Soviet Union was an extreme class society, with peasants forced to stay on their collective farms and non-Muscovites banned from settling in Moscow unless they took up professions that were currently desired by the system). Another caveat is that it was STEM-only, and excluded computer science (which the Soviet system was unconducive to for various reasons) until the 80s. The SU was particularly unwilling to teach anyone foreign languages, unless one chose (and was cleared) to work for intel.
- johanvts 2y agoRussia was(is?) an important contributor to western culture.
- broken-kebab 2y agoThere are plenty of unrelated factoids thrown here in attempt to answer, but the real reason is that DIY, software, engineering, scientific communities in most of former USSR countries have been depending on freely downloaded (or $3 CD compilations) stuff because few people could afford as an example even a legal installation of Windows for a long time. Even if economic difference is not as wide as it used to be, cost of many books, subscriptions, and software tools looks prohibitively high there still. It just became so commonly accepted, and up until very recent times weren't really prosecuted, so a kind of culture emerged where any attempt to uproot this practice feels like an attack against natural rights.
- pyuser583 2y agoMaybe because it's not their culture, so they don't have the self-hatred many Westerns do? There's lots of shouting about whether Russia is Western or European, but I think history shows it's really it's own thing. "Rome and Constantinople have fallen. Only Moscow remains."
- wortelefant 2y agoI wish the publishing industry would create a flatrate model for books and magazines, I would gladly pay for it. With the current business model, digital versions are often more expensive than the printed one. Shadow libraries like z-lib, scihub or Annas Archive are just a symptom: we have a near unlimited demand for digital knowledge, but the supply logic still based on the idea of paper and scarcity.
- dublinben 2y agoDigital products are also worse than physical ones, because the content cartels have used DRM to trample on your first-sale rights like resale and lending. It's no coincidence that digital books are often more expensive than paper books, because the publishers have killed the second hand market.
- autoexec 2y agodigital books also run the risk of being censored or disappeared from your devices overnight. Another nice thing about physical books is that you don't have to worry about anyone spying on you and collecting data on what you read/when/where/how often/how quickly, etc.
- scoot 2y ago> Another nice thing about physical books is that you don't have to worry about anyone spying on you and collecting data on what you read If you buy in a bookshop, for cash. If you think Amazon et al don't know your interests, I have a bridge to sell you.
- Aerroon 2y ago>If you think Amazon et al don't know your interests, I have a bridge to sell you. If they know then they certainly don't seem to act on that information.
- 2y ago
- artninja1988 2y agoIf operating z library is their only "crime" I wish the couple luck and thank them for their service. Hard to say what the money laundering charges are about though
- voxic11 2y agoApparently z-library received user donations and at some point used that donated money to make purchases intended to promote the carrying on of unlawful activities, probably buying hardware or services relating to the operation of z-library, which qualifies as money laundering. Even though it doesn't fit the normal conception of money laundering (hiding the source of illegal money) it still falls under the same law. > In or about and between January 2018 and November 2022, both dates being approximate and inclusive, within the Eastern District of New York and elsewhere, the defendants ANTON NAPOLSKY, also known as "Anton Napolskiy," and VALERJIA ERMAKOVA, together with others, did knowingly and intentionally conspire to conduct one or more financial transactions in and affecting interstate and foreign commerce, to wit: deposits, withdrawals and transfers of funds and monetary instruments, which transactions in fact involved the proceeds of specified unlawful activity, to wit: criminal copyright, as alleged in Count One, in violation of Title 17, United States Code, Section 506(a)(1)(A), and wire fraud, as alleged in Counts Three and Four, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1343 (collectively, the "Specified Unlawful Activities"), knowing that the property involved in the transactions represented the proceeds of some form of unlawful activity, with intent to promote the carrying on of the Specified Unlawful Activities, contrary to Title 18, United States Code, Section 1956(a)(l)(A)(i). https://torrentfreak.com/images/z_library_indictment_0.pdf https://torrentfreak.com/images/z_library_indictment_0.pdf
- beeboobaa3 2y agoThat's absolutely fucked. Literally just piling on crimes with the intent of ruining someone's life.
- dmvdoug 2y agoWelcome to federal prosecution!
- HenryBemis 2y agoI don't think I ever used or bumped into the z-library. Did they have a subscription/paying type of account? Did they have ads running? If they made any kind of revenue from that size, which they used to fund the domains/servers/etc, and their living expenses, that would be a reasonable accusation.
- m348e912 2y agoZ-library is (still) available via a Tor link which can be found via a google search or reddit. Five ebook downloads a day and if you want to do more you need to donate via crypto which increases your download cap depending how much you donate. No ads or subscriptions.
- openasocket 2y ago> if you want to do more you need to donate via crypto which increases your download cap depending how much you donate That doesn't really sound like a donation. That sounds like paying for a service. Unless that donation is going to some third party charity?
- m348e912 2y agoThey describe it as a donation, but I think your description is more accurate. It doesn't go to charity.
- jbm 2y agoThis is a legal semantic argument so you're right; but giving books away for free is of far greater charitable value than most legal charities. I think the eventual historical lesson we will learn 100 years in the future is that "Intellectual property" is not real.
- root_axis 2y agoI don't think the authors of the books would agree. Of course intellectual property is not real, but it's no less real than "property" of any kind, so if you don't object to the idea of property rights, it's not clear to me why people who create digital products are less worthy of economic protection than those who create physical ones.
- mistercheph 2y agoFreeing literature and knowledge is no excuse for violating federal copyright laws
- OutOfHere 2y agoHow is it even a violation if it's outside the US? Argentina is an independent country. US laws do not apply there. I'm sure the random person violates a number of laws of Iran and/or other autocratic countries with one's online comments. Should these countries serve up extradition papers for them?
- ranger_danger 2y agoYou seem to already know what an extradition treaty is, so why is this even a question?
- OutOfHere 2y agoWhat I'm saying is that there was no law of the US that was even violated within the jurisdiction of the US. This is different from incidents of hacking where US assets get attacked. As such, the I.P. charges seem entirely baseless to me. The extradition treaty applies only if a crime is actually committed in a jurisdiction where it is a crime. I do not see this here.
- saalweachter 2y agoCountries have treaties with each other to recognize and protect each other's copyrights.
- gmiller123456 2y agoGenerally if your victims are in a country, other (friendly) countries will arrest and extradite you if the crime is serious enough to justify the effort. There is no "world police" that forbid countries from prosecuting crimes committed outside their borders. A lot of it boils down to how friendly the two countries are with each other, and how serious they view the crime.
- devwastaken 2y agoThe U.S. fed spends more money and political capital going after open libraries than the numerous and destructive violent offenders. Federal corruption is now so common it's a base expectation of life. That's how we know cyberpunk isn't fiction.
- leobg 2y agoMaybe OpenAI should pay for their lawyer.
- openasocket 2y agoFor those curious, here's some info about the U.S. case: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/65760207/united-states-v-napolsky/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/65760207/united-states-... This seems to be the indictment: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/65760207/14/united-states-v-napolsky/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/65760207/14/united-stat... This is the motion to dismiss (filed July 12th 2023): https://torrentfreak.com/images/momodismiss.pdf https://torrentfreak.com/images/momodismiss.pdf And this is the prosecution's response (filed August 14th 2023): https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/65760207/17/united-states-v-napolsky/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/65760207/17/united-stat... Apparently the defense filed a reply to the response on September 11th 2023, but I can't find it without having to pay for it. There doesn't seem to be any additional information, it doesn't seem like there's been a hearing on the motion.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- DEADMINCE 2y agoNo one deserves the dehumanizing hell that is a US prison simply for making copies of information available. God speed to the admins, and may justice prevail so they go free.
- batmaniam 2y agoMost author's don't even make money from their books. Publishers take a massive chunk out of any profits they make, leaving them with barely anything. So even if you buy the book, the author isn't really getting that much, they're probably still starving. The truth is it's the publishers that's not getting paid, and that's why all these lawsuits are happening. The political power one needs to even get someone extradited alone implies it's not just random authors banding together to sue, it's powerful rich publishers, someone with political connections. And prosecutors are going all out it seems, piling on BS charges of money laundering?? I hope the zadmins win. Maybe the ACLU can get in on this to drop the case, but they generally only take open-shut cases in their favor sadly.
- ianburrell 2y agoThat is not how publishing works. Publisher produces the book, sells to book stores, and pays royalties to the author out of their portion. The author gets 10-15% for every book sold. The whole point of going traditional publishing route is to put the risk of producing the book on the publisher. Self-published authors get bigger cut, but have to pay for editing and promotion. There are advances where publishers give money to the author before the book is even completed. The royalties first pay off the advance before author gets royalty checks. Most authors never pay off the advance, but they don't have to pay it back.
- iczero 2y agoI have an extremely hard time believing that editing and whatnot means that it's reasonable for the author to only get 15% of each sale. This is especially the case for ebooks where the marginal cost of each copy is practically zero.
- ianburrell 2y agoFor paper books, the publisher covers cover art, design, and layout. They cover promotion (although authors complain they have to do their own these days). Most importantly, it covers printing, making the physical book, and shipping it to the stores. 50% margins is pretty common for goods. Authors get higher royalties for ebooks, 20-25%. The big part is that the Amazon wants a large cut for running the store. I read the self-publishers get 30-35% royalties (Amazon offers 35% or 70%). But for that they need to pay in advance or do it themselves for production. And the editing can be bad on self-published books.
- localfirst 2y agoMy university attending friend who is financially affluent wishes to know where people are downloading z library books now? He is a law abiding stand up dude who pays for music and wants to write a thesis paper on z library and absolutely does not wish to download these books. ( He is also asking if there is any anime/manga books as he is an Asian American History major )
- fancy_pantser 2y agoZ-Library is still up, there's a reddit wiki page titled "How to access Zlibrary" they keep updated with details.
- carlosjobim 2y agoAnnas Archive, since a long time.
- ofslidingfeet 2y agoI am so embarrassed of my fascist government that it is becoming intolerable.
- greenish_shores 2y agoCorrect move, admins.
- terrycody 2y agoI support Zlibrary.
- Zuiii 2y agoAnton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova have done humanity a great service and I sincerely thank them for it. They are true heroes. I hope they remain safe and out of reach from the deranged laws and the "justice" circuses that are US courts and their jesters. For anyone wishing to engage in a public good that upsets a well-funded US industry (like sharing books, building emulators or compatibility software, fan games, etc), please consider hosting your project on Tor from the start. If evil can flourish on Tor without prosecution, then so should the good.
- TiredOfLife 2y agoYeah. They took all the hard work Library Genesis did. And started selling access to the files.
- SergeAx 2y agoThis is a lie. Z Library is free to access.
- wkat4242 2y agoWow it must be really hard to be on the run like this. They can't have much money, I'm sure the few donations they get aren't lasting long and they had all the lawyers to pay for too. I hope they have made it to Russia. While this service is somehow piracy it also highlights the huge gap of public libraries in the digital age, and they specialise specifically in scientific works which are often overpriced by publishers as far as i understand.
- anonzzzies 2y agoGood admins. Now they need to get to Ecuador.
- dzonga 2y agonever used z-library ? but is it better than lib-gen ? also it seems z-library requires an account for downloads ?
- xbar 2y agoInteresting story, but I'm left wondering what happened to the Toyota Corolla.