8 ms·
https://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
by internetter 2y ago
https://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 agoTpb is still up after what 25 years?
- not_your_vase 2y agoArguably, you are right. There are a few things that shouldn't be ignored: - It used to operate very publicly, but now it is just as opaque black box - no one know who is behind it, operators barely communicate with the community. - It used to be public enemy #1 of the (copyright-) world. Today it is barely a sidenote of the yearly notorious market report. Though the fight against pirate sites is stronger than ever, TPB seems to be silently tolerated. People with certain mindset might wonder why that is.
- pradn 2y agoThe critical thing here is that regular people can help. The archive is already split into many O(GB)-sized chunks. We need to ensure each chunk has many, many copies. Torrents are a widely-understood, robust way to mirror large files. But there's no "meta-coordination" built in to the protocol. It's not possible, using just torrents, to have the swarm cooperatively assign who stores which chunks. The optimization function here is maximal chunk availability, subject to individual storage limits and reliability (ie: how often they're online). It should be easy to just press a button to join a shadow library, allocated 100GB, and be part of the mission. The best effort I've seen in this space is some guy running a script that crawls the number of seeders for a list of SciHub torrents. Users manually pick the ones with the lowest seeds. All very cumbersome, and prone to staleness. Of course, this is all a technical problem, separate from infringing copyright or whatever. In the same way as torrents being a technical solution for sharing files, in a general way.
- squigz 2y agoThis does seem like it would be the way to handle such libraries, considering the immense size of them. I'd be curious to hear about any efforts in this area, of anyone knows of any.
- throawayonthe 2y ago[dead]
- ric2b 2y agoIPFS is a network that solves your coordination problem, compared to torrents it allows you to decide which chunks you want to store and it will even de-duplicate automatically across different "torrents" that happen to include the exact same byte-identical file.
- pshirshov 2y agoThough with its persistent brainsplits it's barely usable, unfortunately.
- 2y ago
- internetter 2y agoI’m not ashamed to admit I’ve used shadow libraries before. 1. More often or not, I am in search of a single piece of information. Buying hundreds of pages of writing is not economical for this goal 2. Sometimes, I own the physical copy and want to search it. Buying a digital copy is a waste when I already own the physical one 3. Occasionally, the content is available to me via my library, but in the case of point 1, traveling all the ways is a waste of time. Some people don’t have access to a library. 4. Sometimes, I want to decide between two books, or see if the book has what I want before I purchase it. 5. A few times, the content I want disappeared, but there it is at the shadow library.
- bananamerica 2y agoHere in Brazil shadow libraries essentially make research possible. Paying for ebooks in US dollar is prohibitive to most academics.
- aaomidi 2y agoIn Iran it’s the only option. Sanctions basically make it impossible to buy books.
- rexpop 2y ago[flagged]
- amanaplanacanal 2y agoBlaming the innocents that live under a brutal regime seems counterproductive.
- rexpop 2y agoBlaming the innocents? I thought I was very clear that the oppressed Iranic people were not the problem.
- 2y ago
- cscurmudgeon 2y ago[flagged]
- internetter 2y agoI imagine your self published works are available for a reasonable price. In this event, piracy is less tempting. Papers and academic books often cost upwards of $75. Furthermore, assuming your work is priced reasonably, imagine the content was not available within a shadow library. Would the people pirating it have paid? Or would they have given up, barred due to their financial situation. Personally, I can say confidently that I have never once pirated something I would have otherwise paid for
- tuna74 2y agoPeople have the right to set the price for their work and output. If you don't think it is a fair price, don't use the work.
- internetter 2y ago1. In very few circumstances are the authors setting the price of their work. The publishers do, and the authors receive a small cut. 2. Here, you are contending that knowledge should only be available to those who can pay. That's a completely valid opinion, but let's just be clear about what it is insinuating.
- carlosjobim 2y agoThe authors have sold their agency to the publishers, they are the authors' agents.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago> If you don't think it is a fair price, don't use the work. If the price is not set "fairly" (in the sense of "I'm willing to pay this price"), people will look for the good on another market (the gray market).
- thebookreader 2y agoYeah, after libgen didn't work properly anymore since last month or so, I donate to AA each month for speedy downloads. Has the advantage that it also works for papers, so no more libgen/scihub split.
- darreninthenet 2y agoWhat's AA in this context...?
- internetter 2y agoAnna's Archive
- darreninthenet 2y agoThank you I hadn't heard of this until now, what a fabulous resource
- ptek 2y agoAngela's Archive
- darreninthenet 2y agoThank you I hadn't heard of this until now, what a fabulous resource
- yannis 2y agoJust randomly checked the financials of one publisher of textbooks (Pearson) profits up 30%. So how did the judge assess the $30mil damages and who are the publishers that they would share it with? Assuming of course that they can get dollars from ether.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago[flagged]
- dangitman 2y ago[dead]
- mouse_ 2y agoauthors are already starving; publishers don't want to pay them either.
- 627467 2y agoShow us 1 author available in shadow libraries who would literally starve. It's ridiculous. If you can pay, you'll pay. And if you can't you were never part of the market
- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoObviously "starving" was hyperbole, but that doesn't change the fact that they wrote it and you just want it for free. I've never heard a cogent, logically consistent argument from the "knowledge should be free" crowd about why creators of this knowledge shouldn't be compensated.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago> I've never heard a cogent, logically consistent argument from the "knowledge should be free" crowd about why creators of this knowledge shouldn't be compensated. And I have never heard a cogent, logically consistent argument from the "intellectual rights" crowd about why this justifies the usage of violence against the "knowledge should be free" crowd.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago[flagged]