23 ms·
U.S. court orders LibGen to pay $30M to publishers, issues broad injunction
- david4656 2y ago[dead]
- chimeracoder 2y ago> Last year, Libgen also told users that it's primarily funded through Google advertising. In the video, Libgen was warning users that while admins are difficult to unmask, "Google gets informed of every download, and if a user has ever registered with Google, then Google knows exactly who they are, what they've downloaded, and when they downloaded it." This seems like... a bad plan if your goal is to run a website whose primary purpose is not entirely legal.
- crtasm 2y agoWhile I see googletagmanager embedded on the .li site I don't think they can tell if you click the download link or just viewed the page for a book, at least.
- arccy 2y agotag manager can inject scripts that can observe pretty much why interaction with the site
- tedivm 2y agoHow are they even able to stay anonymous if they're using google ads? I assume they have to provide a bank account to get paid, and with all the KYC laws it's not exactly trivial to hide your identity.
- squigz 2y agoReminds me of the Nintendo Switch emulator developers setting up a Patreon.
- ksynwa 2y agoRyujinx still has a patreon so running a patreon is not what solely did them in.
- squigz 2y agoI didn't mean to imply that. It just doesn't seem to have helped their case very much.
- mindslight 2y agoThe biggest vulnerability for hackers has always been trying to get normie clout for our actions. Whether back in the day from pure social bragging, or now from trying to tie in to contemporary surveillance media. It's painful to watch, but if they had been more reserved you likely wouldn't hearing about them in the first place.
- squigz 2y agoI don't know man, plenty of hackers manage to get by and get eyes on their work without getting sued.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoReally depends. Worst thing you can do as a hacker is have a brand. Anything more than "that guy who did X" is putting you as a flight risk for corporate. You can't put a face or even handle on yourself, ideally. But that's all social media is these days.
- red_admiral 2y agoDon't kids use TOR anymore these days?
- mrkramer 2y agoYou mean man in the middle deeply suspicious project maintained by who knows who which promotes itself as privacy protecting service.
- Hizonner 2y agoThe names and backgrounds of all of the people maintaining Tor are easily found.
- Scoundreller 2y agoYabbut, why burn your « reputation » as a privacy protecting service by taking down book pirates?
- gardnr 2y agoParallel construction is legal in the USA
- EasyMark 2y agoThe people running Tor for intel don’t give a damn about you downloading “C Structures for the Down and Out” or “Horus Lupercal, Saint or Savior—Another Take”, they have bigger fish to fry and don’t need that distraction
- gardnr 2y agoFor those readers wondering if “ C Structures for the Down and Out” is a real book: please be patient. Claude is writing it as we speak.
- sham1 2y agoI mean, the latter seems to be a bit heretical. In fact, inquisitors have been dispatched to get rid of that. The Emperor Protects! --- But that is a good point. It's doubtful that the intelligence community would care too much about people downloading books in the TOR Network. Or if they did get an interest in that, it works have to be a very special book, indeed.
- Laaas 2y agoI’m not sure using it is illegal.
- IncreasePosts 2y agoYes - don't take my advice, but isn't the precedent with BitTorrent piracy that downloaders aren't gone after, only uploaders?
- ang_cire 2y agoNo, it's not. They go after downloaders as well. I speak from experience. :)
- sureglymop 2y agoNo. It just depends on the jurisdiction you are in. It's not illegal where I am located.
- big-green-man 2y agoSo the distinction is, using bittorrent is not illegal (yet). It's just a protocol for sharing files. But using it as a tool for illegal activity is illegal, because youre doing something illegal. The same applies to Tor, for now.
- krick 2y agoSure, but how do you even keep it sustainable? All most useful things in the world are kinda fundamentally non-monetizable, illegal, or both. Wikipedia is the only thing that succeeded, and even that I'm starting to have some doubts about, because of how heavily politically influenced it is.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 2y agoSo making libgen is illegal, but using it to train LLMs is legal? I know there's a whole issue of transitive liability (maybe you couldn't know you were getting an illegal thing from the thief, so it doesn't always make sense for you to to be liable too), but this kind of thing seems to power way too much of my industry for me to be comfortable.
- outside2344 2y agoThe people training LLMs have billions of dollars and the people using it to read that can't afford a $300 journal do not. So training is legal and reading is illegal.
- ErikAugust 2y agoSo, the solution to legal problems is… money? Lots of money?
- complianceowl 2y ago[flagged]
- qwerty456127 2y agoLibGen is the most important achievement of humanity. It is much more important to keep it going than the most of sovereign countries.
- pphysch 2y agoA proper sovereign country, not dominated by totalitarian corporations, ought to create and maintain something like LibGen as a national common good.
- littlestymaar 2y agoBut how should people be incentivized to create new stuff if the old one isn't being hidden away from the public's eyes. /s
- dansitu 2y agoHow would this differ from a system of public libraries, which most advanced countries have?
- aftbit 2y agoBecause it offers the content to everyone anywhere for free without authentication or a limit on the number of concurrent copies available. Is this a good tradeoff between protecting IP to incentivize creation through monetization and the various societal goods of making it widely available? I don't know, but it is certainly a different point on the continuum than traditional libraries.
- qwerty456127 2y ago> Is this a good tradeoff between protecting IP to incentivize creation through monetization and the various societal goods of making it widely available? I don't know The actual current status-quo is. Despite the most of the worthy books being available on pirate websites, people still buy books. Publishers still are not bankrupt. Even independent individuals post "I wrote a book" here every now and then, link to DRM-free purchase pages and seem happy. I personally spent many hundreds dollars buying DRM-free ebooks on GumRoad and HumbleBundle (despite most of them being on LibGen!). I also bought numerous hardcover paper books after reading their pirated ebook versions.
- squigz 2y agohttps://annas-archive.org/datasets/lgrs https://annas-archive.org/datasets/lgrs
- e40 2y agoIt would seem they would be an even bigger target given they accept funds for "fast" downloads. EDIT: btw, I tried to use anna's archive a few times and couldn't download the files. Something always broke before it finished. Definitely a way less good experience compared to libgen.
- kristofferR 2y agoAnna's Archive is being sued, the court case has been going on for months [1]. Unlike this Libgen court case, they likely identified the owner, Maria Dolores Anasztasia Matienzo. It's not just another court case against anonymous unidentified persons. They found her due to her poor opsec (nickname was anarchivist), so it may shut down soon. [1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68157923/oclc-online-computer-library-center-inc-v-annas-archive/?order_by=desc https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68157923/oclc-online-co... Weirdly, the lawsuit is not from book publishers, but by the owners of WorldCat, a book metadata database she scraped and uploaded.
- squigz 2y agoIIRC, there is very little real evidence to link Maria to Anna's Archive, and AFAIK we're still waiting for more proof on that.
- kristofferR 2y agoThis is a civil suit, so only a >50% likelihood of guilt is required. The circumstantial evidence is pretty convincing IMO unfortunately. 1. The name, Anna's - Anasztasia. 2. That Anasztasia has the nickname Anarchivist and is a self-described archivist. 3. That Anasztasia had a GitHub WorldCat scraping project. Perhaps there were more things I forgot. Her personal blog writing reads very similar to the AA blog to me too. I unfortunately think they've found the AA owner. Thankfully Anna's Archive is fully open-source, so it'll likely live past this civil case in some way.
- lordnacho 2y agoSo, how does it operate on a technical level?
- ticoombs 2y agoAnna's Archive has a complete repository on how they have it setup. https://software.annas-archive.se/AnnaArchivist/annas-archive https://software.annas-archive.se/AnnaArchivist/annas-archiv...
- kundi 2y agoIt's disappointing to see how they cannot see what it means for libgen to exist in the broader sense. Books should be free for all, and we should encourage and educate people to donate back the value they received from them
- JonChesterfield 2y agoDo you have thoughts on persuading people to spend years of their lives writing books for zero compensation?
- emaro 2y agoI think a UBI could be a good start.
- readthenotes1 2y agoI'm willing to receive that. How much will you be giving me?
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoIirc the current rate is 120 CRC per month. Sign up here: https://circles.garden/welcome/onboarding https://circles.garden/welcome/onboarding The real question is: are you willing to build a community around accepting it? Otherwise it's just numbers.
- ndileas 2y agoLots of people already do, in essence.
- k_roy 2y agoThe people who are using libgen, are probably also not the people who would pay an author for a book anyway. Not saying I agree or disagree one way or another, but that's really probably the reality.
- whimsicalism 2y agoThey typoed libgen for linkedin in the article > n the order, McMahon gave registrars of LinkedIn domains 21 business days to either transfer domains to publishers' control or "otherwise implement technical measures, such as holding, suspending, or canceling the domain name to ensure the domain names cannot be used" for further copyright infringement.
- psadauskas 2y agoI think taking down linkedin would be overall better for humanity...
- krick 2y agoHow can there be any doubt?
- jamal-kumar 2y agoIt's a pretty good OSINT tool for threat actors to map out your operation imho
- specialist 2y agoIt once helped me, romantically. Over dinner, my date said "I'm glad LinkedIn is good for something." On the balance though, ya, shut it down.
- hiccuphippo 2y agoYes that confused me for a while.
- layer8 2y agoUnfortunately the court order doesn’t have that typo. ;)
- ssalka 2y agoEven if they get the whole site taken down, I'm pretty sure whoever operates it can just deploy the same thing to any number of other domains. The actual server infrastructure would need to be taken offline, which it sounds like they don't have enough information to do.
- lyu07282 2y agoYeah seems kind of like a futile effort, even the piratebay is (somehow) still online to this day.
- dyauspitr 2y agoWith old torrents, nothing compared to its heyday. I wonder where people get the esoteric stuff from now. 5-10 years ago it used to me newzbins and demonoid
- ang_cire 2y ago> I wonder where people get the esoteric stuff from now I don't know what DHTs it's pulling from, but BitMagnet lets me find LOTS of cool, obscure stuff.
- krick 2y agoDo you really believe that? Stuff like that is really troublesome to keep alive. Piratebay is hardly the thing is was, and it's a torrent site, which is relatively easy to host. A better example would be rarbg, which is not alive anymore. They only exist because of almost fanatical dedication of some highly productive individuals, god bless them. Even if they don't get into serious trouble, it's still a hassle to avoid getting into trouble and work with actual content, not just host a bunch of torrent-links other people provide. So, at some point they'll lose the desire to do that, and I am not so sure that there always will be somebody to take post. In fact, I even worry a bit about what will happen to Linux when Torvalds finally passes away, and for sure Linux depends on him much less so than all those pirate resources on the people who maintain them.
- mrkramer 2y agoIs there a legal alternative to illegal projects like Libgen? I would really really want something like Netflix for books, where I can easily discover and read books.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- whimsicalism 2y agolibby? hoopla? also kindle unlimited
- eimrine 2y agoThat are not for technical books, and Amazon used to be famous for deleting a book from used's devices. It is not exactly fare to compale an honest source of technical books which allows anyone to download some rare tech books with a source of DRM which requires me to deal with something not exactly reading. Just look at those websites - who is that visitor of libgen website who needs those animations?
- forgotpwd16 2y agoGP asked a Netflix for books. Not fare to compare but it's what was asked.
- whimsicalism 2y agoyeah obviously libgen is way better, it’s what i use. but i was just answering the question
- pta2002 2y agoThat's the entire concept of a public library.
- bityard 2y agoMy library even lets me check out books from Kobo e-reader.
- dansitu 2y agoArmchair anarchists aside, it's galling to see the work my co-authors, editors, designers, illustrators, translators, and reviewers poured months of our lives into available for free on this site. Money is rarely an incentive for writing a textbook, but it's certainly important for the brilliant and under-appreciated people who work in publishing, maintaining the fragile existence of our greatest technology: the book.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- wing-_-nuts 2y ago>it's galling to see the work my co-authors, editors, designers, illustrators and translators poured months of our lives into available for free on this site. I would be more empathetic if publishers gave the same lending rights to ebooks as they give to physical ones. As it is, the publishers basically extort libraries to the point where offering ebooks drains coffers way more than physical ones. Given that, I don't feel too much guilt 'borrowing' from alternate sources.
- toast0 2y ago> I would be more empathetic if publishers gave the same lending rights to ebooks as they give to physical ones. As it is, the publishers basically extort libraries to the point where offering ebooks drains coffers way more than physical ones. Publishers give you no lending rights on physical books; legislation and common law give you rights to lend that stem from the first-sale doctrine where I live. Push your legislators (or courts) to establish first-sale doctrine over digital content and there you go.
- wing-_-nuts 2y agoOur legislators don't seem very interested in consumer rights and protections anymore, so I'm not terribly interested in their copyright laws.
- zerr 2y ago
- bityard 2y agoOn the modern internet, you don't need to know who runs it in order to shut it down. They already have a court order to pull down all of the known domains and the registrars have 20 days to comply. If that doesn't work, many countries have systems in place where copyright holders can tell ISPs not to let their customers access certain links. (Either via blocking DNS requests or null-routing the IP/netblock.) Serious question: Why aren't Libgen, Annas-Archive, and others operating solely as an onion service on TOR?
- wyre 2y ago> Why aren't Libgen, Annas-Archive, and others operating solely as an onion service on TOR? I’d assume is maximizing access to genpop
- esalman 2y agoTOR comes with it's own baggage.
- wubrr 2y agoThere are obvious workaround for all of the things you mention. > Why aren't Libgen, Annas-Archive, and others operating solely as an onion service on TOR? Probably because that would make it less accessible and more slow.
- kevin_thibedeau 2y agoYou only need a dynamic-DNS system on the hidden service. Then you can avoid the regulatory capture of registrars and host in a friendly country.
- wkat4242 2y agoFor now. Right now DNS blocking is used because it works for 95% of people. Once it doesn't, they'll start demanding more serious means of blocking. I'm surprised that didn't happen yet because DNS blocking is so ineffective. It's basically just akin to removing a business from the phone book or yellow pages.
- dang 2y agoUrl changed from https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/09/pirate-library-must-pay-publishers-30m-but-no-one-knows-who-runs-it/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/09/pirate-library-m..., which points to this. Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- yieldcrv 2y ago> The lawsuit was stalled for months because LibGen’s anonymous operators didn’t respond. With no other viable options left, the publishers filed a motion for a default judgment in their favor. Narrator: and LibGen’s anonymous operators still didn’t respond The domain name injunction is interesting, but they want IPFS gateways to comply too, thats odd but a direct IPFS hash would work, are there any browser extensions that resolve ipfs:// URIs?
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y agoIn a better world, the government would run something like libgen. That shit’s a public good.
- gardnr 2y agoHave you been to your local library? Hah! It’s a bit different but kind of the same. LibGen manifests the idea that humanity and its progress are more important than copyright. I wonder if Anthropic, OpenAI, or Meta.ai have spent much time looking at LibGen…
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y agoMy positive experiences with libraries is exactly what I’m drawing on. It seems to me that if physical libraries can be made free to use, nothing prevents a digital equivalent other than lack of the same sort of funding.
- jen729w 2y agoThere is a digital equivalent. Your local library allows you to borrow e-books or e-audio-books. (Probably.) The apps are a bit janky, but they're there.
- gizajob 2y agoThe apps are beyond janky compared to free PDFs and epubs delivered in seconds from libgen with no login. Long live libgen - one of my favourite places on the ‘net.
- eoinbmorg 2y agoThe notion of 'borrowing' an e-book, which has no intrinsic limit to number of times it can be checked out or when it must be returned, is a joke.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mhh__ 2y agoThe really annoying thing is that libgen is often the only place one can actually get a book.
- teekert 2y agoRight?! I have a PocketBook, their store is absolutely useless, I can’t read anything with DRM, even had to return paid for books because I couldn’t get that adobe crap working on Linux. It’s drm-free or libgen for me.
- d1sxeyes 2y agoI was considering getting one but your comment worries me. Do you have an older device? I thought the device itself could do the DRM if you threw an acsm file at it?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- teekert 2y agoHmm, never tried that. What's the use of the DRM if it would work? The most frustrating is that store, even searching for the most popular books yields weird, useless results for me.
- d1sxeyes 2y agoYou can borrow e-books from libraries, but they come with DRM which means that they can manage “loans” and “returns” so they have a nominal number of books to lend out. Quite a good service actually, called Libby. There are obviously ways to remove the DRM and make just a normal ePub but I’d quite like not to have to do that if I don’t have to.
- saulrh 2y agoEven when you're in a major international market like the United States it's frequently the case that books are nearly unobtainable, especially if they're older or limited printings of specialist material. Sometimes I'll get recommended an old SF book or a particular reference manual and it turns out that it had one run in 1985 and there are four copies available on the used market at prices between three hundred and three thousand dollars. Tons of works are one minor complication, like living in the southern hemisphere or not being rich, away from being effectively non-existent.
- trollied 2y ago"While this is a win on paper, it’s unlikely that the publishers will get paid by the LibGen operators, who remain anonymous."
- compootr 2y agoLibgen put up even more mirrors next time. Publishers: [surpised pikachu face]
- enriquto 2y agoIs there any way for us individuals to help libgen? Some sort of ipfs distributed storage? It would be a tragedy if it was lost. It's an essential resource for scientists and for bibliophiles! I've recently stopped buying books from publishers that engage in this shitfuckery (Elsevier, Springer, etc). This frees almost 1000 EUR/year that I'd love to steer towards libgen, sci-hub and similar initiatives. But not for paying these stupid fines, of course.
- FredFS456 2y agoThere exist torrent archives of everything on libgen, you can theoretically download the whole catalog. I think it's their backup strategy.
- throawayonthe 2y agolibgen is backed up by annas-archive and you can help seed the torrents https://annas-archive.org/datasets https://annas-archive.org/datasets https://annas-archive.org/torrents https://annas-archive.org/torrents
- squigz 2y agoNot entirely sure why this was dead. This is the answer to GP's question.
- boldlybold 2y agoThanks, was looking for something like this. With all the hardware I'm sure is sitting idle under HN users, we could make a big contribution for ~free.
- ponkipo 2y agoSo.. if I want to help and seed the torrents, do I have to download the whole 80-120 TB for this? can I somehow help when I don't have a space for hundred TB on my machine? went to the website but didn't find a guide or anything else on how to do it
- 2y ago
- uptownfunk 2y agoThis is so messed up.
- throawayonthe 2y ago[dead]
- ak_111 2y agolibgen and z-library must be Russia's greatest philanthropic contribution to the rest of mankind (despite all the other dodgy stuff it is involved in, which I am not belittling). It was a no brainer for them from a strategic point of view: knock out a hugely profitable business (textbook publishing) of you adversary while increasing your soft power by 100x due to the unpopularity of said industry. There are surely loads of artists and independent technical authors who got screwed by it which I am not diminishing, but this is more than dwarfed by the benefit to the hundred of millions around the world especially from developing countries who can't afford to pay $100+ for a textbook on essential topic like organic chemistry or electrical engineering. In fact even if you want to pay this much sometimes it is the only place to find an out of date scientific book (which I needed to do often in mathematics) that is not being published due to lack of demand while at the same time the publisher refuses to submit the book to the open domain.
- ssl-3 2y agoLibgen is Russian?
- ang_cire 2y agoI don't think there's any evidence of that, it's just supposition based on them being unable to locate them.
- ssl-3 2y agoIs there a difference betwixt treating supposition as implicit fact and deliberate misinformation?
- sudoshred 2y agoIntent is easier to falsify than impact, generally.
- reisse 2y agoThere is a lot of evidence that it was originally made by someone Russian-speaking, starting from the fact that initial LibGen collection was some Russian and English literature taken from a Russian torrent-tracker. However I'm sure there was "no strategic point of view" whatsoever, just a pet project by some kind-hearted people. You can read some other research here - https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/26038/11339.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/2603.... (And I also have some very brief "scene" knowledge from circa 2010-2012, which confirms the fact, but you'll have to trust my word for it.)
- ang_cire 2y agoDamn, I'd better grab stuff now then! :D
- ysofunny 2y agoit's a real problem that will not be solved by trying to apply current laws digital assets which don't suck under capitalism require real innovation from the government or, if that doesn't work, the people themselves
- throwaway14356 2y ago51.5 TB non fiction pdfs has only 2TB of txt.
- big-green-man 2y agoThat's because most of them are basically images. I wish they could be gone through and converted to a better format but that's one hell of an undertaking.
- Jerry2 2y agoDo you have a magnet for it?
- throwaway14356 2y agothere is a git repo that claims to do it. They might have it for you.
- southernplaces7 2y agoThe reason why LibGen no longer loads at all since yesterday, suddenly solved.
- insane_dreamer 2y agostill loads as of right now
- southernplaces7 2y agoYou have it loading? I've repeatedly tried libgen.rs and it claims a typo, despite this being its link.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- musicale 2y ago> “Plaintiffs have been irreparably harmed as a result of Defendants’ unlawful conduct and will continue to be irreparably harmed should Defendants be allowed to continue operating the Libgen Sites”, the order reads. What is the evidence?
- ipnon 2y agoThere is no evidence. Because the defendants have remained anonymous, the court issues what’s called a “default judgment.” Essentially this means that since the defendants’ did not present their case, the court is obliged to accept the plaintiffs’ case as-is.
- musicale 2y ago> Hoping for a better outcome, textbook publishers Cengage, Bedford, Macmillan Learning, McGraw Hill, and Pearson Education The same companies pushing subscription models, restrictive e-book licensing, bundling, single-use codes, needless revisions, and anything else they can do to eliminate the first sale doctrine (and with it third party used textbook sales and rentals) and extract more money from students.
- gymbeaux 2y agoGetting my textbooks from Library Genesis was a favorite college pastime. When I couldn’t get them from LibGen I’d get a slightly older revision of a textbook for pennies on the dollar. The only time these leeches you mention got my money was with those codes required to do the homework.
- rustcleaner 2y agoBoy I hope the court is completely impotent to actually enforce anything in this case. Why are we not slipping onion support into Hyphanet's opennet and just uploading library genesis to that?
- dartharva 2y agoI am connecting from India and I already can't access the original libgen sites (libgen.rs, libgen.st). Indian ISPs waste no time in blocking websites at the first indication, even when the people requesting have no jurisdiction on them.
- ProllyInfamous 2y agoTwo decades ago, a full-tuition scholarship allowed me to attend a wealthy private US university. After my first semester of expensive book purchases, I was on broke and on academic probation (partially from working so much to afford living expenses!). Fortunately, a friend showed me how to purchase identical-edition textbooks from Indian/SriLankan publishers — written in English and with valid online access codes. Including shipping, textbooks from this source were identical material (on cheaper paper) but only cost 20% of US publisher prices. On recollection, I'm sure this was somehow illegal/contraband; but looking at it it decades later it still feels like academia/publishers are robbing the majority of students with their prices (just like healthcare... taxes... etc.).
- d13 2y agoNow, can someone help explain to me how I can ask LibGen (or Google, or my ISP) to refund me the thousands of dollars I’ve lost in royalties on the 7 books of mine they have up there? https://libgen.is/search.php?req=Rex+van+der+spuy&lg_topic=libgen&open=0&view=simple&res=25&phrase=1&column=def https://libgen.is/search.php?req=Rex+van+der+spuy&lg_topic=l... Google gave me link, searching my name turned them up.
- internetter 2y agohttps://annas-archive.org/blog/critical-window.html https://annas-archive.org/blog/critical-window.html Years of this whack-a-mole, yet no clear use case found for banning shadow libraries. Books are highly information dense, making them an ideal target for archival. Shadow libraries are unique in their ability to search over all knowledge known to man, something that publishers refuse. They democratize access, resist censorship (some of which is happening in the land of the free), and provide better chance at preservation. There’s not even much evidence that shadow libraries detract from authors, who are already robbed by publishers (and most of the publisher’s funding comes from institutions, not individuals) To hell with it. Viva la revolución. Let knowledge be free.
- not_your_vase 2y agoThe spirit is commendable, and the idea is arguably nice. But the free (as in speech) internet is over. I don't like it, but the days of these libraries are counted. Just like the other pirate sites. (Don't visit torrentfreak.com, if you don't want to get depressed. It reports bad news every day, and it only gets worse lately.)
- wincy 2y agoYandex is an exceptional resource for finding torrent sites these days. It’s still out there.
- not_your_vase 2y agoI'm not saying that they don't exist anymore. I'm saying that you should do a yandex search now, and repeat the same search in January. If you compare the number of results, most probably you will see what I'm talking about.
- gosub100 2y agoIf they can't operate on the clearnet they will take it to Tor or I2P.
- idunnoman1222 2y ago
- vasco 2y agoFunny picturing a wooden caravel full of books sailing around the Cape of Good Hope followed by a mega yacht full of lawyers.
- gweinberg 2y agoI don't understand how this kind of judgement is possible, I understand that if you don't show up for a trial you can have a default judgement against you, but don't you have to be served? I know you can include John Does on the defendant list, but doesn't somebody have to be served?
- teeray 2y agoKinda feels like putting a serial killer on trial when you don’t know who it is
- Iulioh 2y agoMore like an estimation of something stolen. "We don't know who did it but when found they are liable for X€ of damage"
- darreninthenet 2y agoWho's going to complain about not being served?
- jfengel 2y agoI am not a lawyer, but I was intrigued by the question so I did My Own Research (tm). Apparently the answer is that you can sue a web site and serve the Internet service provider and whoever registered the domain name. I would imagine that if there's an anonymizer for the domain they are accepting responsibility for delivering such subpoenas. (I didn't see that started as fact.)
- crazygringo 2y agoBut while ISP's are being ordered to block the site, the $30 million judgment is directed at Libgen itself. Not an ISP or registrar. So I don't think that can be the full answer here.
- jfengel 2y agoI was just looking at the question of serving the lawsuit. Winning a default judgment kind of assumes that the defendant at least heard about it, which is hard when you don't know who it is. Googling turned up that this happens a lot in hit and run cases. I didn't go down that rabbit hole.
- amanagnihotri 2y agoUpon the progress of knowledge the whole progress of the human race is immediately dependent: he who retards that, hinders this also. And he who hinders this, — what character does he assume towards his age and posterity? Louder than with a thousand voices, by his actions he proclaims into the deafened ear of the world present and to come — 'As long as I live at least, the men around me shall not become wiser or better; — for in their progress I too, notwithstanding all my efforts to the contrary, should be dragged forward in some direction; and this I detest I will not become more enlightened, — I will not become nobler. Darkness and perversion are my elements, and I will summon all my powers together that I may not be dislodged from them.' - Fichte, The Vocation of the Scholar.
- jfengel 2y agoWhich side are you supporting here? The ones who claiming they should be paid to support their work, or the ones claiming that everyone should work "for the progress of the whole human race" rather than for money?
- nosianu 2y ago> The ones who claiming they should be paid to support their work, It would be much easier if one side was the authors. The problem is it's "rights holders". As a frequent reader on RoyalRoad and occasional Patreon supporter of one or the other author I am well aware that many authors indeed to have a problem of theft of their stories. Examples: - https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/7183/crashed-into-fantasy/chapter/465081/stolen-yet-again https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/7183/crashed-into-fantasy/... - https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/33922/ashes-of-empires/chapter/1675686/notification-of-hiatus-for-foreseeable-future https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/33922/ashes-of-empires/cha... I doubt though that any of those law suits are meant to protect those little guys. In addition, I think we need something else. Digital copying is so very different from theft of tangible objects that I think society as a whole would be much better off if we manage to come up with a different method to pay authors, without the huge amount of effort and infrastructure to artificially limit distribution. I mean, it kind of works for music? Far from ideal, but at least it's something. Okay, it works a tiny bit better. On second thought, maybe it "works" when I use a radio Yerevan kind of definition...
- paulddraper 2y agoI'm confused, admittedly my understanding of law is limited. 1. You can sue a person or corporation. (But e.g. you can't sue ""Antifa"" because that is neither.) 2. Incorporation involves named officers. What am I missing?
- prosody 2y agoIn the case of this lawsuit they're suing unknown individuals. The case is Cengage Learning, Inc. v. Does 1-50. Apparently it's a US legal convention to just spitball the number of members of a group of unknown alleged coconspirators to 50.
- fallingsquirrel 2y ago> McMahon gave registrars of LinkedIn domains 21 business days to either transfer... Hilarious and sad typo. What a clown world we're living in, where the worthless AI-generated virtue-signaling drivel from LinkedIn is allowed to continue existing, but this vast trove of knowledge that's broadly useful for humanity is forced into the shadows.
- kmeisthax 2y ago> Last year, Libgen also told users that it's primarily funded through Google advertising. In the video, Libgen was warning users that while admins are difficult to unmask, "Google gets informed of every download, and if a user has ever registered with Google, then Google knows exactly who they are, what they've downloaded, and when they downloaded it." In my opinion, this seems like a particularly stupid risk to take as a pirate site. Ad networks would be in a prime position to dox all your users and, were the publishers so inclined, they could easily get that data and target your individual users for legal harassment. Are the costs of running Libgen seriously that high that they have to defray them with advertising specifically?
- crazygringo 2y agoIt's factually wrong. First, while Google aggregates lots of data for analytics and advertising, and if subpoenaed may be able to say that a given user visited a given pirate site, they only know the user opened pages -- not that they clicked a download link or successfully downloaded an ebook, because the ebook file itself contains no Google advertising. It's not illegal to do a search on a pirate site. The only illegal part is the downloading, and ad networks don't have any record of that part.
- saalweachter 2y agoIt depends whether your goal is "to make information free" or "give away stolen goods to trick users into giving you their PII so you can monetize with internet ad bucks". Just because you like what someone is doing in principle doesn't mean they're good people doing it for good reasons.
- trompetenaccoun 2y ago"UNESCO advocates for access to information as a fundamental freedom and a key pillar in building inclusive knowledge societies" https://www.unesco.org/en/right-information https://www.unesco.org/en/right-information *But only for rich people in first world countries who can afford spending hundreds of dollars on overpriced textbooks.
- meindnoch 2y agoWorks fine in Europe so far.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y agoIf they can't collect from a specific person, "judgements" are just some pencil neck running around with a clipboard shouting randomly and freaking out.