[HN Gopher] Z-Library Petitions U.S. and Argentina to Cease 'Ill...
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Z-Library Petitions U.S. and Argentina to Cease 'Illegal' Criminal
Prosecution
Author : gslin
Score : 84 points
Date : 2023-08-11 15:50 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (torrentfreak.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (torrentfreak.com)
| skyyler wrote:
| They provide access to unlicensed copyrighted materials for a
| fee.
|
| I have no sympathy. If they didn't have a premium membership this
| would be much different.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| > If they didn't have a premium membership this would be much
| different.
|
| You can buy invites to private trackers too. You can buy ratio
| - the ability to download more. It's complicated.
|
| The difference is you've never heard of the private trackers.
| (Edit: it turns out the poster is in private trackers.)
|
| One thing's for sure: Congress has completely abrogated its
| role in resolving these matters to everyone's liking.
|
| > I have no sympathy
|
| Like piracy exists, massive piracy, de jure, that's the status
| quo, it would be extremely reductionist and flawed to be like,
| "Well piracy is illegal." Like every person you like has
| probably pirated something, something expensive. I bet one of
| your favorite professors or TAs has probably copied a book for
| people: they're facilitating piracy. Something something log in
| your eye.
|
| I'm not saying you're wrong or right or whatever. I'm saying
| every meaningful IP related question nowadays requires years of
| courtroom litigation to Just Get a Fucking Answer. It's chaos.
| candiodari wrote:
| > One thing's for sure: Congress has completely abrogated its
| role in resolving these matters to everyone's liking.
|
| I wish congress would do what they are supposed to do. The
| constitution clearly states that Congress can blablah
| (copyright) WITH THE PURPOSE OF ADVANCING science and useful
| arts. That's the only purpose of copyright.
|
| Now, for books, compare what you can get on zlibrary, with
| what you can buy at amazon. Never mind comparing it to a
| local bookstore. It becomes obvious quickly that the superior
| move for advancing the arts (not just availability) is to let
| them exist.
|
| This is the problem: copyright kills availability. After 2-3
| _weeks_ (months for some books, and the only books lasting
| years are textbooks, which also ought to be free, for
| different reasons) books aren 't economical to print anymore.
| This means that after 6 months or so new works disappear into
| a black hole because for-profit firms don't distribute them
| anymore, and copyright means nobody else is doing it either
| (certainly libraries don't hold on to them. I mean you can
| get lucky, but ...)
|
| Same thing goes for movies. Theater release. TV release.
| Netflix release. Say this takes a year (these days). After
| that, good luck getting hold of a movie.
|
| Now can anyone tell me _how_ creating a 6-month event horizon
| for all books, after which they disappear into a black hole
| forever, advances science and useful arts ...
|
| They can even keep Disney in power for all I care. How about
| you have to prove 1000 sales in a year to retain copyright?
| skyyler wrote:
| I'm on some private trackers. When they get shut down, I
| won't be surprised.
|
| In my anarchist circles, other things are recommended before
| z-lib, which is a second-to-last resort.
|
| There's an ebook piracy scheme that's been going on longer
| than z-lib, but it's a little bit more complicated to use
| than just a website, so it kinda flies under the radar.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| > I'm on some private trackers [which do basically the
| exact same thing that Z-Library does, with more steps]
|
| > anarchist circles
|
| Okay well, demanding ethical piracy from everyone except
| for the piracy that you use is pretty NIMBY of you.
|
| And anyway, I'm not sure why you're being downvoted! This
| humorless website...
| skyyler wrote:
| I'm not demanding ethical privacy, I just understand why
| they were shut down.
|
| It's a bummer for humanity, but the people running z-lib
| should have known what they were getting into by charging
| for a fast lane.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Buying ratio is the same as charging for a fast lane.
| 7moritz7 wrote:
| This isn't a counter argument
| skyyler wrote:
| And selling ratio opens a private tracker to legal issues
| far beyond where they would be if they didn't.
|
| My tracker gives you points based on site and IRC
| activity which you can use to buy invites and ratio.
|
| Donation gives your username a different colour in the
| shoutbox. I think you can pick colour if you donate
| enough.
| dingusdew wrote:
| [dead]
| dmos62 wrote:
| > In my anarchist circles, other things are recommended
| before z-lib, which is a second-to-last resort. > > There's
| an ebook piracy scheme that's been going on longer than
| z-lib, but it's a little bit more complicated to use than
| just a website, so it kinda flies under the radar.
|
| Pray tell.
| vallassy wrote:
| The first rule of fight club...
| [deleted]
| tux3 wrote:
| there's #bookz, that's pretty well known
|
| slsk is also an old thing that sometimes surprises,
| though it's not the best for books
|
| much newer is telegram bots for all sorts of things, from
| sci-hub replacement to general ebooks
| ndiddy wrote:
| > There's an ebook piracy scheme that's been going on
| longer than z-lib, but it's a little bit more complicated
| to use than just a website, so it kinda flies under the
| radar.
|
| In my experience downloading books from IRC isn't as
| annoying as getting them from zlibrary etc but the
| selection isn't as good.
| f6v wrote:
| I have a friend who downloaded shit ton of books and never paid
| a dime. He thinks Z lib is one of the best things that happened
| to Internet.
| hackan wrote:
| It indeed is, your friend is right.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| I can't disagree.
|
| University publishers have consolidated in an anti-trust
| manner to virtual monopolies, and so charge zillions for
| books that should be $20 instead of $200. Universities have
| become massive cash-extraction businesses swimming in coin,
| spending 10-100M's USD each on buildings in short order,
| while trying to keep up the pretense of academic purity.
|
| And then there are the journals that are so expensive that
| high school and college students and people in developing
| countries who cannot afford to get past their paywalls.
| This reinforces both an economic and a scientific elitism.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| I think that licences and copyrights are a useful litmus test
| in the move towards post-scarcity. If the copyright advocates
| win, you can expect even more artificial scarcity in the future
| with most people's living standards reduced to something worse
| than serfdom. If the copyright system can be weakened, then
| there is a chance that most people will see greater prosperity.
|
| Currently, there is no viable way to access all that
| information without databases like the Z-Library or
| scihub/libgen. All those library subscriptions are just a
| legalised form of extortion, which are usually inaccessible if
| you aren't affiliated with a university (or not with the right
| one)
| nmeagent wrote:
| I always think of this quote from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
| when these issues come up:
|
| "As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final
| century, free flow of information is the only safeguard
| against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at
| last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with
| freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually
| constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid
| slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access
| to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your
| master."
|
| --Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights",
| Datalinks
| tokai wrote:
| I'm sorry to tell you this but copyright advocates won back
| in 1886.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| Not really, it's fairly easy to find most things on the
| internet without acquiring them from an official source.
| It's an open question of what will happen next - if
| "trusted computing" and the appliance model wins, then you
| can say goodbye to that. However, that hasn't happened yet,
| and computers are still open computing platforms. I
| certainly hope for a future where that doesn't happen.
| neoromantique wrote:
| They do need to fund it somehow, don't they?
|
| It can also be (easily) argued that Z-Library is a definitive
| net-benefit to the humanity as a whole.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| Library Genesis (and there are multiple LibGen servers now!)
| has operated for years without the same profit model as
| Z-Library. In fact, in the e-book piracy scene that goes back
| well over a decade already, Z-Library's model is pretty
| unusual and has always been under a cloud of controversy.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| This. LibGen is respectable, Z-Library is not.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| Let's just come out and say it plainly: Z-Library is a
| definitive net-benefit to the humanity as a whole. Simple as
| that.
| skyyler wrote:
| I don't disagree with this sentiment.
|
| Taking money in exchange for priority access to the
| "stolen" materials makes things feel less like charity,
| though.
| sertraline wrote:
| This isn't true. They provide materials for free, but with a
| daily limit. That isn't to mention 10 books a day is a lot as
| you are not limited by download size. Even then, nothing stops
| you from waiting 24 hours. To say that they are not allowed to
| have a membership model that allows them to sustain themselves
| is nothing but jumping on high horse. People always say they
| would donate, but saying so is not the same as doing so. Most
| people never donate, and the donation model was never
| sustainable.
| permo-w wrote:
| 10? perhaps my memory is failing me, but I strongly remember
| it being 5
| some_random wrote:
| >To say that they are not allowed to have a membership model
| that allows them to sustain themselves is nothing but jumping
| on high horse.
|
| It's copyrighted content, why would they be allowed to
| sustain themselves illegally reselling it?
| sertraline wrote:
| May be because they are not reselling anything. As far as
| I'm concerned, in a legal world you cannot get your
| textbook without paying first. Z-library gives you these
| books for free. If you reached your daily limit, you wait
| 24 hours. No one really forces you to get into membership
| and there are other, free ways to avoid the daily limit. By
| your logic they either must provide copyrighted content for
| free and pay hosting out of their pocket or provide nothing
| at all since they don't have the moral ground to ask for
| money. Servers cost money, a lot of money.
| some_random wrote:
| You seem to think that because they give 10 books a day,
| somehow charging for the 11th onward doesn't make it a
| commercial operation? And yes, I think that if you're
| going to be hosting material in violation of copyright
| distributing it for free (or asking for voluntary
| donations) is the only remotely ethical way to do it.
| Otherwise, you're illegally profiting off of other
| peoples work.
| sertraline wrote:
| I don't know what's hard about understanding "daily
| limit" model. If you can't download 11th book, just come
| back tomorrow and you can download 10 more books. You can
| download 10 more books the next day after that. You can
| download infinite amount of books, downloading 10 of them
| every single day. This is what "daily limit" means. Now,
| "charging" means there is no other way to download the
| 11th book unless you pay. There will be no way to
| download it tomorrow, or the next day after that, unless
| you pay. This is "charging". Their membership model is no
| different from donations, except that membership gives
| you benefits. You are NOT forced to get it.
| skyyler wrote:
| The fact that you can pay and get something in exchange
| for the payment makes it a commercial enterprise.
|
| It's very simple.
|
| Libgen isn't facing the same issues because it isn't a
| commercial enterprise.
| [deleted]
| mcpackieh wrote:
| There is nothing wrong with a library that limits the number of
| books people can read per day unless they pay. Libraries in
| many western countries are customarily free to access, but they
| don't have to be this way.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| The whole thing is a paywall-to-really-use it operation?
|
| That's what always confused me about z-lib, whereas its
| scientific version has all its TBs of data available via torrent
| (albeit very slowly), this one seemed like a shady operation
| based on the fact that i cannot simply start downloading
| everything.
|
| Will it only be google that has books as a data source?
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| They're either not operating in reality or it's for a laugh.
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(page generated 2023-08-11 23:01 UTC)