5 ms·

Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI

38 points by skadamat 2y ago

gizajob 2y ago
And got quickly borked to hell once the news came out about Meta using it.
- Legend2440 2y ago
  Nah, it's always been like this. Libgen bounces around a lot between domain names and semi-official mirror sites, that's just the nature of piracy.
  - gizajob 2y ago
    True but .rs and .is were working great for the past couple of years and both stopped connecting when the Meta news came out a few weeks ago.
- nope1000 2y ago
  Works great on my end.
jrm4 2y ago
Law aside, LibGen is probably the best and most complete library-of-books humanity has ever created, no? Seems like that should be the lede a lot more.
- observationist 2y ago
  Amazing things happen when motivated individuals and communities disregard arbitrary and evil laws. You might not be entitled to all content produced, but you're also not entitled to exploit people and win endless profit. Cut out the parasitical middlemen and use LibGen, SciHub, and all the myriad communities that have built up around curation and distribution of content. Pirate everything. Donate directly to authors and creators, actors, writers, and others.
  - xhkkffbf 2y ago
    Donate to authors? How many ever do this. Please. I'm sure if your livelihood was affected by piracy, you would feel differently.
    - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
      > I'm sure if your livelihood was affected by piracy, you would feel differently. The livelihood of many researchers is affected by piracy - in a positive way. If these shadow libraries wouldn't exist, they would have a much harder time doing their research (and thus - to bring in livelihood - staying in their research position and/or getting research grants).
    - grafmax 2y ago
      It’s worth noting that paying retailers and publishers books is actually a very inefficient way to compensate authors. They typically only see a small fraction of this revenue. The piracy debate often simplifies the issue as one of pirates vs authors. But pirates vs publishing and retailing businesses is closer to the truth, when you look at where the money goes.
    - observationist 2y ago
      Not many people donate, yet many of my favorite authors have this available. I've even donated to actors and animators that had bitcoin wallets. The DMCA exists almost entirely to support a class of fiscal leeches and parasites who extract value from individuals and groups who produce media. Copyright law in the US is fundamentally and irreparably broken; rights holders hoard massive collections of legal technicalities, then use the gotcha provisions to go after little people, artists, parents of kids who don't know to use a vpn, and an endless parade of people who don't even deserve to be hassled over a downloaded file, let alone have their lives and livelihoods wrecked. 99.999% of all sales, whether physical or digital, have been made within 5 years of media going to market. A vast majority of the profits from those sales go to publishers, platforms, lawyers in the middle, and people who bring virtually no value to the market whatsoever. They tell great stories about how they provide funding and advertisement, and guaranteed sales, and distribution, but the fact of the matter is, we live in a connected world where there is nothing cheaper than the things they purport to facilitate. We need to disempower these centralized leeches and overhaul copyright law, limiting the scope and scale to which massive organizations can hoard rights, strictly limiting the time frame. Massive corporations like Sony profiting off of a technicality, not bringing any concurrent return on value to society, simply leeching off artists, and using the returns to get their tentacles on more - situations like this have to end. It's absurd, and it incentivizes abuses almost anywhere it touches. Please. Pay attention to the world you live in - it's not about the "yOu WoUlDn'T dOwNlOaD a CaR!11!" argument, it's about the rules we purport to live by serving nobody except the lawyers who figured out gotchanomics exploits and spend a metric shitton of money on lobbying, bribes, campaigns, and aggressive lawsuits to defend their racket. That MAFIAA is a thing should be sufficient incentive to wipe the board and start from scratch. Until the copyright system gets fixed and there's a fair system in play, pirating everything is the only moral and ethical choice. By continuing to participate and support the system as is, you kick the can down the road to some future generation to handle. You disenfranchise the artists who are exploited, suppressed, and otherwise abused. You put money in the pockets of lawyers who "earned" that profit on a technicality. By pirating and donating directly, you do no harm and ever so slightly deprive a badly broken and abusive system of unearned profit.
- brador 2y ago
  Books? Yes. But IMO the prize for greatest accumulation of copyrighted digital cultural artefacts goes to the original megaupload. (The vast majority of which was lost when their servers were raided and shut down.) Maybe archive has it beat now though. Actually, no, I think megaupload still beats it.
kokonoko 2y ago
Surely Facebook and all the other companies will get sued for using copyrighted material for their products. Right? Right? Let's just hope it won't be so bad for these poor companies. Thankfully companies themselves can't contemplate suicide. I know this is a snarky comment but the double standards are killing me. Also this has been said a thousand times but I have to repeat it here. Abolish the paywalls for scientific research. Elsevier and the rest of the gang that produce nothing of value, gatekeepers of knowledge that did not produce. Seriously, what is their running cost nowadays? An FTP server with the PDFs? Semi-honest question.
mitchbob 2y ago
https://archive.ph/2025.03.21-013240/https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/03/search-libgen-data-set/682094/ https://archive.ph/2025.03.21-013240/https://www.theatlantic...

38 points by skadamat 2y ago

gizajob 2y ago

And got quickly borked to hell once the news came out about Meta using it.

Legend2440 2y ago
Nah, it's always been like this. Libgen bounces around a lot between domain names and semi-official mirror sites, that's just the nature of piracy.
- gizajob 2y ago
  True but .rs and .is were working great for the past couple of years and both stopped connecting when the Meta news came out a few weeks ago.
nope1000 2y ago
Works great on my end.

jrm4 2y ago

Law aside, LibGen is probably the best and most complete library-of-books humanity has ever created, no? Seems like that should be the lede a lot more.

observationist 2y ago
Amazing things happen when motivated individuals and communities disregard arbitrary and evil laws. You might not be entitled to all content produced, but you're also not entitled to exploit people and win endless profit. Cut out the parasitical middlemen and use LibGen, SciHub, and all the myriad communities that have built up around curation and distribution of content. Pirate everything. Donate directly to authors and creators, actors, writers, and others.
- xhkkffbf 2y ago
  Donate to authors? How many ever do this. Please. I'm sure if your livelihood was affected by piracy, you would feel differently.
  - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
    > I'm sure if your livelihood was affected by piracy, you would feel differently. The livelihood of many researchers is affected by piracy - in a positive way. If these shadow libraries wouldn't exist, they would have a much harder time doing their research (and thus - to bring in livelihood - staying in their research position and/or getting research grants).
  - grafmax 2y ago
    It’s worth noting that paying retailers and publishers books is actually a very inefficient way to compensate authors. They typically only see a small fraction of this revenue. The piracy debate often simplifies the issue as one of pirates vs authors. But pirates vs publishing and retailing businesses is closer to the truth, when you look at where the money goes.
  - observationist 2y ago
    Not many people donate, yet many of my favorite authors have this available. I've even donated to actors and animators that had bitcoin wallets. The DMCA exists almost entirely to support a class of fiscal leeches and parasites who extract value from individuals and groups who produce media. Copyright law in the US is fundamentally and irreparably broken; rights holders hoard massive collections of legal technicalities, then use the gotcha provisions to go after little people, artists, parents of kids who don't know to use a vpn, and an endless parade of people who don't even deserve to be hassled over a downloaded file, let alone have their lives and livelihoods wrecked. 99.999% of all sales, whether physical or digital, have been made within 5 years of media going to market. A vast majority of the profits from those sales go to publishers, platforms, lawyers in the middle, and people who bring virtually no value to the market whatsoever. They tell great stories about how they provide funding and advertisement, and guaranteed sales, and distribution, but the fact of the matter is, we live in a connected world where there is nothing cheaper than the things they purport to facilitate. We need to disempower these centralized leeches and overhaul copyright law, limiting the scope and scale to which massive organizations can hoard rights, strictly limiting the time frame. Massive corporations like Sony profiting off of a technicality, not bringing any concurrent return on value to society, simply leeching off artists, and using the returns to get their tentacles on more - situations like this have to end. It's absurd, and it incentivizes abuses almost anywhere it touches. Please. Pay attention to the world you live in - it's not about the "yOu WoUlDn'T dOwNlOaD a CaR!11!" argument, it's about the rules we purport to live by serving nobody except the lawyers who figured out gotchanomics exploits and spend a metric shitton of money on lobbying, bribes, campaigns, and aggressive lawsuits to defend their racket. That MAFIAA is a thing should be sufficient incentive to wipe the board and start from scratch. Until the copyright system gets fixed and there's a fair system in play, pirating everything is the only moral and ethical choice. By continuing to participate and support the system as is, you kick the can down the road to some future generation to handle. You disenfranchise the artists who are exploited, suppressed, and otherwise abused. You put money in the pockets of lawyers who "earned" that profit on a technicality. By pirating and donating directly, you do no harm and ever so slightly deprive a badly broken and abusive system of unearned profit.
brador 2y ago
Books? Yes. But IMO the prize for greatest accumulation of copyrighted digital cultural artefacts goes to the original megaupload. (The vast majority of which was lost when their servers were raided and shut down.) Maybe archive has it beat now though. Actually, no, I think megaupload still beats it.

kokonoko 2y ago

Surely Facebook and all the other companies will get sued for using copyrighted material for their products. Right? Right? Let's just hope it won't be so bad for these poor companies. Thankfully companies themselves can't contemplate suicide. I know this is a snarky comment but the double standards are killing me. Also this has been said a thousand times but I have to repeat it here. Abolish the paywalls for scientific research. Elsevier and the rest of the gang that produce nothing of value, gatekeepers of knowledge that did not produce. Seriously, what is their running cost nowadays? An FTP server with the PDFs? Semi-honest question.

mitchbob 2y ago

https://archive.ph/2025.03.21-013240/https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/03/search-libgen-data-set/682094/ https://archive.ph/2025.03.21-013240/https://www.theatlantic...