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LibGen is the most important achievement of humanity. It is much more important to keep it going than the most of sovereign countries.

pphysch 2y ago
A proper sovereign country, not dominated by totalitarian corporations, ought to create and maintain something like LibGen as a national common good.
- littlestymaar 2y ago
  But 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 ago
  How would this differ from a system of public libraries, which most advanced countries have?
  - aftbit 2y ago
    Because 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.
- eimrine 2y ago
  > maintain something like LibGen as a national common good. Soviet Russia used to have amazing collection of printed literature on STEM topics, the books have published not for the sake of earning money, also they used to have free libraries among all the villages. This is the closest example I can give and BTW those Russian books are freely published on Russian torrent trackers. > A proper sovereign country, not dominated by totalitarian corporations Even without any further clarification the search among existing countries is going to return 0 results.
  - pinewurst 2y ago
    Also free psychiatric hospitals where dissidents would be confined with "sluggish schizophrenia" and dosed heavily with psychoactive drugs.
    - eimrine 2y ago
      Psy* (psychology, psychiatry etc) is neither a science nor a medicine. If your only issue with Soviet regiment is intential usage of psy* pseudoscience then try to search about the Rosenhan experiment.
      - qwerty456127 2y ago
        There is neuroscience though which is a science and can prove things like depression and schizophrenia exist (many distinct kinds of both, possible to distinguish using MRI). Sadly there aren't many neuroscientists and MRI machines available to general public so we still have to rely on psychiatrists for help when our neural system goes awry. In many cases they actually help.
  - qwerty456127 2y ago
    > Soviet Russia used to have amazing collection Meanwhile they still have flibusta.is where almost any book ever published in Russian can be downloaded one-click as structured XML (FB2) and the maintainer is dying of brain cancer right now after having paid for the server to run for some more weeks. Russian is among the top languages in terms of the amount of books published in it. Apparently we are witnessing two great libraries of humanity dying at the same time.
deleted 2y ago
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pphysch 2y ago

A proper sovereign country, not dominated by totalitarian corporations, ought to create and maintain something like LibGen as a national common good.

littlestymaar 2y ago
But 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 ago
How would this differ from a system of public libraries, which most advanced countries have?
- aftbit 2y ago
  Because 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.
eimrine 2y ago
> maintain something like LibGen as a national common good. Soviet Russia used to have amazing collection of printed literature on STEM topics, the books have published not for the sake of earning money, also they used to have free libraries among all the villages. This is the closest example I can give and BTW those Russian books are freely published on Russian torrent trackers. > A proper sovereign country, not dominated by totalitarian corporations Even without any further clarification the search among existing countries is going to return 0 results.
- pinewurst 2y ago
  Also free psychiatric hospitals where dissidents would be confined with "sluggish schizophrenia" and dosed heavily with psychoactive drugs.
  - eimrine 2y ago
    Psy* (psychology, psychiatry etc) is neither a science nor a medicine. If your only issue with Soviet regiment is intential usage of psy* pseudoscience then try to search about the Rosenhan experiment.
    - qwerty456127 2y ago
      There is neuroscience though which is a science and can prove things like depression and schizophrenia exist (many distinct kinds of both, possible to distinguish using MRI). Sadly there aren't many neuroscientists and MRI machines available to general public so we still have to rely on psychiatrists for help when our neural system goes awry. In many cases they actually help.
- qwerty456127 2y ago
  > Soviet Russia used to have amazing collection Meanwhile they still have flibusta.is where almost any book ever published in Russian can be downloaded one-click as structured XML (FB2) and the maintainer is dying of brain cancer right now after having paid for the server to run for some more weeks. Russian is among the top languages in terms of the amount of books published in it. Apparently we are witnessing two great libraries of humanity dying at the same time.

deleted 2y ago

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