[HN Gopher] U.S. court orders LibGen to pay $30M to publishers, ...
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U.S. court orders LibGen to pay $30M to publishers, issues broad
injunction
Author : samizdis
Score : 212 points
Date : 2024-09-26 18:22 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (torrentfreak.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (torrentfreak.com)
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| While 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 wrote:
| tag manager can inject scripts that can observe pretty much
| why interaction with the site
| tedivm wrote:
| How 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.
| K0balt wrote:
| Meh. Not really.
| nikcub wrote:
| There are online vendors who will lease out their AdX
| accounts. The industry is rife with fraud.
| squigz wrote:
| Reminds me of the Nintendo Switch emulator developers setting
| up a Patreon.
| ksynwa wrote:
| Ryujinx still has a patreon so running a patreon is not what
| solely did them in.
| squigz wrote:
| I didn't mean to imply that. It just doesn't seem to have
| helped their case very much.
| mindslight wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| I don't know man, plenty of hackers manage to get by and
| get eyes on their work without getting sued.
| red_admiral wrote:
| Don't kids use TOR anymore these days?
| mrkramer wrote:
| You mean man in the middle deeply suspicious project
| maintained by who knows who which promotes itself as privacy
| protecting service.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Yabbut, why burn your << reputation >> as a privacy
| protecting service by taking down book pirates?
| gardnr wrote:
| Parallel construction is legal in the USA
| EasyMark wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| For 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 wrote:
| I 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.
| Hizonner wrote:
| The names and backgrounds of all of the people maintaining
| Tor are easily found.
| GrantMoyer wrote:
| TOR doesn't man in the middle your traffic. An exit node
| could snoop your traffic if it's unencrypted, but no TOR
| nodes can see into a encrypted TLS stream, for example.
| Laaas wrote:
| I'm not sure using it is illegal.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Yes - don't take my advice, but isn't the precedent with
| BitTorrent piracy that _downloaders_ aren 't gone after, only
| _uploaders_?
| krick wrote:
| Sure, 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 wrote:
| So 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 wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| So, the solution to legal problems is... money? Lots of
| money?
| morkalork wrote:
| Always has been.
| yapyap wrote:
| Meh, I'd say power, the power is just being conveyed
| through money in this scenario
| ryandrake wrote:
| Money and political/legal power are freely and
| effortlessly convertible both ways.
| tiledjinn wrote:
| access to money. don't even need to use it.
| exe34 wrote:
| beautifully put, thank you! it's the golden rule - those with
| the gold make up the rules.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| Gold or money is a just proxy for power.
|
| Power is the final crux here.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| They are cross fungible and leverage able, so this is a
| silly empty distinction.
|
| But money has historically been more effective at
| producing or controlling power than the other way around.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| They are not cross fungible.
|
| Money/gold is a proxy in the current social system.
| exe34 wrote:
| that's right, the neanderthals didn't use gold, they hit
| each other with clubs.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| I'm not sure I can agree with that, because
| _historically_ speaking would include the time we had
| nobility. And in that time period, having money would not
| provide you with power, as nobles were beyond the law and
| could simply cease it for themselves.
| AlanYx wrote:
| There's the concept of inducing copyright infringement (a la
| MGM v. Grokster), so much depends on whether those who train
| LLMs were inducing libgen's operations in some way, for example
| if payment or resources were being contributed to libgen.
| coliveira wrote:
| Welcome to the future! Companies will make illegal or very
| expensive to access original information, like scientific
| papers. However, guess what, your friendly AI LLM, trained by
| your friendly tech monopoly on stollen data, will allow you to
| access all this research that was paid with your taxes, through
| monthly payments. But don't ask the AI where it got this
| information from, because it can get really upset with you...
| exe34 wrote:
| if you ask it to explain how it arrived at this reasoning,
| they'll ban you.
| int_19h wrote:
| It's actually amusingly easy to have ChatGPT criticize some
| OpenAI practice or another. Tell it to do a search for some
| controversial story, then to "analyze it from an ethical
| standpoint".
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Seriously, who is running around here on HN downvoting such
| comments?
| omnimus wrote:
| There is old group photo floating around with Sam Altman and
| Aaron Swartz.
|
| One ended up in jail commiting suicide for scraping freely
| licensed JSTOR articles.
|
| The other is considered hero for scraping JSTOR articles and
| every other article ever.
|
| Lesson is dont waste peoples time with things that dont make
| money. More money it makes the safer you are.
| mrinfinitiesx wrote:
| RIP Aaron Swartz.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| LibGen is the most important achievement of humanity. It is much
| more important to keep it going than the most of sovereign
| countries.
| pphysch wrote:
| A proper sovereign country, not dominated by totalitarian
| corporations, ought to create and maintain something like
| LibGen as a national common good.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| How would this differ from a system of public libraries,
| which most advanced countries have?
| aftbit wrote:
| 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.
| eimrine wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Also free psychiatric hospitals where dissidents would be
| confined with "sluggish schizophrenia" and dosed heavily
| with psychoactive drugs.
| eimrine wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| eimrine wrote:
| Hurry up with downloading these from the website because
| the Flibusta author has reported on having glioblastoma
| few days ago, and there is no new leader for the project.
| The servers are going to be shut down and the good name
| is going to be spotless because of not reused. Probably
| this is why you told about "two great libraries of
| humanity dying at the same time". BTW all 450Gb of
| Flibusta can be downloaded via torrents but I don't know
| how to download all of Libgen.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > I don't know how to download all of Libgen.
|
| See https://wiki.mhut.org/distribution:torrents
|
| I just hope enough capable people will download
| everything to be able to create mirrors again someday.
| Perhaps the darknet can turn out a better place.
| squigz wrote:
| https://annas-archive.org/datasets/lgrs
| e40 wrote:
| It would seem they would be an even bigger target given they
| accept funds for "fast" downloads.
| lordnacho wrote:
| So, how does it operate on a technical level?
| ticoombs wrote:
| Anna's Archive has a complete repository on how they have it
| setup.
|
| https://software.annas-archive.se/AnnaArchivist/annas-archiv...
| kundi wrote:
| It'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 wrote:
| Do you have thoughts on persuading people to spend years of
| their lives writing books for zero compensation?
| emaro wrote:
| I think a UBI could be a good start.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| I'm willing to receive that. How much will you be giving
| me?
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Iirc the current rate is 120 CRC per month. Sign up here:
| 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 wrote:
| Lots of people already do, in essence.
| k_roy wrote:
| The 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.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > The people who are using libgen, are probably also not
| the people who would pay an author for a book anyway
|
| Quite the opposite: as with all piracy, the ones who pirate
| stuff are also the ones who spend the most money buying the
| stuff they pirate. (For books there's the obvious reason
| that paper is still by far the best reading experience, but
| it was also true of DVD, video games, music CDs etc. but
| these people wouldn't have spent more money if piracy was
| impossible).
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| The only med books I bought were atlases (histology,
| anatomy, etc) Everything else I borrowed, photocopied or
| bought second hand. Many of my classmates did the same.
| In our group, very few rich students ever photocopied or
| bought second hand
|
| If books weren't sold for profit, we would have better
| books, only released less often. Back then, we didn't
| have so many yearly releases, and I honestly think that
| isn't needed.
|
| Why would we have better books you say? Similar to how
| open source projects draw very good programmers. Some do
| it for prestige, and some weird ones do it for the joy o
| f doing true quality work. IMHO
| PhysicsStudent7 wrote:
| I've bought multiple physics textbooks which I've first
| downloaded from libgen. I'm not going to spend 50-100EUR of
| my money on a book before skimming through the contents
| first. Also some textbooks on niche topics can cost more
| than 200EUR or cannot be found at all.
|
| The alternative would be to make a request for my
| university library to get the book, but I don't know how
| long that would take if it would happen at all.
|
| Would the world be a better place if I stuck to studying
| only the books in local libraries and what I can personally
| afford? I personally don't think so.
| tharmas wrote:
| >The people who are using libgen, are probably not the
| people who would pay an author for a book
|
| Isn't that supposed to be the publisher's job? They don't.
| Just ask the authors.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Wait until you discover that researchers aren't compensated
| by publishing corporations for their papers. Or that most
| book authors get ridiculous royalties in their publishing
| contract (a few percent of the price, including for ebooks
| that are being sold at the price of paper copies) unless they
| are already famous.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > Wait until you discover that researchers aren't
| compensated by publishing corporations for their papers.
|
| Yes, but most researchers are compensated by either the
| state, universities or companies hoping to profit of their
| research. Little high-level research is done for the fun of
| it.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| They should find a patron or grant making institution that
| values the production of knowledge, not publishers who seek
| property to license out.
| dleeftink wrote:
| Many have done so, and will continue to do. No one has to be
| persuaded if they have thoughts on their mind. Compensation
| is the side-effect.
|
| [0]: https://monoskop.org
|
| [1]: https://www.rheingold.com/texts/tft/
|
| [2]: https://computerhistory.org/collections/
|
| [3]: https://oapen.org/
| yreg wrote:
| I dislike copyright as much as the next guy, but the people
| who want to write and share free books can (and do) do that
| now as well.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| So, that creates a world (not too dissimilar to our own,
| but notably so) where only the independently wealthy can
| ever afford to produce art full time. Can you see any
| downsides to that world?
| pksebben wrote:
| I'd be more on board with this take if it were artists
| engaging in these lawsuits. Elsevier doesn't elicit the
| same sympathy, though.
|
| 'Stealing' from a company with 2B in profit (much from
| publicly funded research), LibGen is looking a lot like
| Robin Hood to Elsevier's Prince John.
| ursuscamp wrote:
| The greatest and most lasting art in human history was
| created by artists who were sponsored by the wealthy as
| their only source of income.
| dansitu wrote:
| This is survivorship bias: art owned and protected by
| wealthy sponsors has a much higher chance of making it
| through the years. Most art is folk art, and has been
| lost to the centuries.
| amelius wrote:
| This is like saying that no great software would exist if
| people didn't get paid for developing software.
| hotspot_one wrote:
| Do you think books which are written by people who had to be
| persuaded to write them are worth reading?
| visarga wrote:
| Yes, the second order effects of money incentive. Internet
| and movies also suffer from enshittification.
| daedrdev wrote:
| I think the chance of financial success can incentivize the
| author to make a better work. Let the authors who are
| willing to write for free release their work for free.
| visarga wrote:
| > Do you have thoughts on persuading people to spend years of
| their lives writing books for zero compensation?
|
| Most books make very very little income for the author. So it
| is already the case.
| daedrdev wrote:
| I don't think we should make it even worse for them. They
| are at least going to make some money for their long months
| or years of work with a chance to make it big.
| nanna wrote:
| I buy most of my books second hand. The author doesn't get
| anything from that either. Should it be illegal?
| mullingitover wrote:
| Yes: we can pay authors nothing. It works. In fact we can
| make them grovel to get something published, and even get
| them to pay for the privilege of being _considered_ for the
| publishing we 're offering zero compensation for.
|
| We can give ourselves a cool name. "Elsevier" has a nice ring
| to it.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| Do the same people who think that every line of code ever
| written should be free; also think that every book, article, or
| painting should also be free?
|
| Or are there people who draw lines and say that one type of
| work product should always be free while it is OK to charge for
| another?
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Maybe get back to the original 20 years of copyright
| protection instead of the insane "70 years after death of the
| author" that has been made solely for the interest of the IP
| holders?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| they might suggest various other revenue models aside from
| royalties.
|
| For instance, taking on production of art as a commission or
| pre-sale, releasing a book once a fundraising goal has been
| met, but not attempting to sue people for unauthorized copies
| after the fact
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| Eh idk but books should definitely be free. We can talk about
| the rest once the books are free.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| So if authors refuse to spend the time and resources needed
| to get a work ready for publication because they will be
| denied any compensation for doing so; should they be forced
| to write them anyway so that you can have your free books?
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| How should authors get paid? What about editors?
| saulrh wrote:
| Unconditional basic income. Grants for the arts. Stipends.
| Unconditional basic income. Sponsorships. Unconditional basic
| income. Donations. Maybe even unconditional basic income.
|
| Look, no artistic endeavor needs to make a billion dollars.
| Even when something _does_ take a billion dollars in revenue,
| none of it goes to the artists anyway! Music labels and movie
| studios and book publishers are _infamous_ for creative
| accounting and bogus contracts and outright lies to fuck over
| almost every person that actually contributed to the art.
| They 're worse than politicians. It's all there to funnel
| even more money to people who are already rich. If you put
| artists on basic income _you 're not paying them any less_,
| you're not losing anything, 99.9% of them come out _ahead_ of
| where they would 've been if they'd sold their work for
| money. Maybe add a couple more nines to that list. For every
| multimillionaire movie star or generation-defining author
| there are literally hundreds of thousands of artists just
| barely scraping by. Capitalist art only benefits the leeches.
| daedrdev wrote:
| If the UBI is high enough for people to live on with no
| other income, then I think it will be too expensive for the
| state to avoid going bankrupt as millions of people stop
| doing productive work to live easy lives.
|
| If it is not enough to live on, then only the independently
| wealthy can do art, which goes against the exact goal you
| stated.
| dwallin wrote:
| That's clearly a false dichotomy, even the post you are
| replying to outlined a number of ways which an artist
| might supplement their income.
|
| Also the idea that a significant UBI would lead to people
| just coasting seems patently false. Every bit of evidence
| shows that when given the opportunity the majority of
| individuals are driven to improve the quality of their
| lives; and also, that quality is measured in relative and
| not absolute terms.
| dbspin wrote:
| > as millions of people stop doing productive work to
| live easy lives
|
| Or alternately, millions of people will cease busy work
| which adds no value - and engage in genuinely productive
| tasks instead. Caring for their families, locally growing
| food, building collaboratively, teaching and learning
| form one another. We only reach for succour and addiction
| when dispirited and alienated. Graeber was far too
| conservative in his definition of bullshit jobs. The vast
| mass of us now work in the production of bureaucratic
| services so far removed from an actual good as to be
| incalculable. Our work is bullshit, or worse - actively
| destructive, and we know it.
| tharmas wrote:
| Authors? Its the publishers who get paid. The authors just
| write the words.
| lyu07282 wrote:
| Authors and editors should be able to live from their work
| and libgen et al should exist as well. I don't think it's so
| incomprehensible to imagine that reality because we are
| living that reality right now. We can also save a lot of
| money if we get rid of publishers. People will always buy
| physical books that will be enough to sustain authors, on top
| of that we can subsidize from taxes. You have to remember
| that not everyone is a liberal.
| daedrdev wrote:
| The vast majority of authors are not popular enough to live
| on their works. Publishers actually loose money publishing
| vast majority of their books, meaning most authors gain
| value from the publisher since the publisher clearly is
| loosing money to the author.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| What it means for libgen to exist in the broader sense is that
| we are used to pilfering what we value but cannot afford.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > donate back the value they received from them
|
| Maybe this is not the topic you were going for but this
| triggers me because I've long wondered how to do pricing fairly
| in general. If you're a monopolist or in a highly competitive
| market, what strategy could you use regardless to arrive at a
| fair price? I think the answer is cost + a little bonus because
| nothing else really works. If I had to pay the value it brings
| me for everything in life... what are my glasses worth, half my
| salary? The work computer (as an IT person) is maybe three
| quarters of my salary? That already does not add up and I still
| haven't paid for the food I need or my office chair
|
| The person who makes it knows the cost price and needs to set a
| price for money to work, I think. Which is not to say that
| donations can't work, you can always feel free to make an
| exception and give the author a good day, but it wouldn't work
| as a general payment model I don't think
| BadHumans wrote:
| There is no pricing that would satisfy the person you are
| responding to other than free.
| daedrdev wrote:
| I think the creator of a book should be able to charge for
| their work if they desire to do so for a reasonable amount of
| time, actually, especially considering most authors don't make
| a lot of money form their works.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Books should be free for all
|
| Most books that are in the public domain today (hence with no
| legal hindrances whatsoever) are still _not_ meaningfully free
| or available to all. Copyright turns out to be simply a minor
| issue when viewed in a larger perspective; actually making
| works meaningfully available whenever this can be done free of
| legal issues is actually a lot more important. Note that this
| encompasses discovery and findability (e.g. through detailed
| cataloging) as well as practical access (e.g. through
| availability in a variety of open formats). It 's a hard
| problem and one that's far from being comprehensively
| addressed.
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment.
|
| Also, interesting username.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| They 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 wrote:
| I think taking down linkedin would be overall better for
| humanity...
| krick wrote:
| How can there be any doubt?
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| It's a pretty good OSINT tool for threat actors to map out
| your operation imho
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| Yes that confused me for a while.
| layer8 wrote:
| Unfortunately the court order doesn't have that typo. ;)
| ssalka wrote:
| Even 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 wrote:
| Yeah seems kind of like a futile effort, even the piratebay is
| (somehow) still online to this day.
| krick wrote:
| Do 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.
| lyu07282 wrote:
| I mean it's not literally about the piratebay or libgen, or
| napster or whatever. I think historically it's true to say
| that it never really mattered how much effort they invest
| in destroying piracy. The fact that storage gets cheaper,
| yet text won't grow in size over time also makes me rather
| optimistic. Piracy was also always a decentralized effort
| by like-minded individuals, it's about the idea, you can
| arrest people, seize a name and people die, but an idea
| will never die.
|
| Piracy of books in particular has been around since the
| 17th century btw, if that helps to convey why I'm not
| worried.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| What happens when the key leadership retires/dies? No one
| has ever found a solution to this problem. It is not novel
| nor simple, and certainly not exclusive to any group,
| project, or institution.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| tpb is not really still extant
| lyu07282 wrote:
| In a sense it doesn't anymore true, in another I just
| downloaded a recent Ubuntu ISO just this week from it. You
| get what I mean.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| With 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
| bogwog wrote:
| It keeps the lawyers employed
| mrkramer wrote:
| Is 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.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| libby? hoopla?
|
| also kindle unlimited
| eimrine wrote:
| That 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 wrote:
| GP asked a Netflix for books. Not fare to compare but it's
| what was asked.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| yeah obviously libgen is way better, it's what i use. but i
| was just answering the question
| pta2002 wrote:
| That's the entire concept of a public library.
| bityard wrote:
| My library even lets me check out books from Kobo e-reader.
| kajecounterhack wrote:
| _Easily_ is the operative word. Blockbuster was easy but you
| had to drive there -- netflix is easier. Libraries similarly
| require driving (unless you use overdrive / similar) but
| piracy is easier for many as well. Books just haven't found
| their spotify/netflix; the kindle store is basically 2009
| itunes.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I don't think many realize how much libraries have via
| internet ("overdrive / similar") these days. You don't even
| have to show up in person to sign up at my local library.
|
| Libgen and the like tend to just have more on hand though,
| and that's the big differentiator in usability IMO. There
| are things your local library just isn't going to have a
| copy of but libgen will. After that happens once, why
| bother with the library again? Outside of "it's legal" or
| "I find more moral" type concepts there tends not to be a
| strong reason.
| eimrine wrote:
| > like Netflix for books, where I can easily discover and read
| books.
|
| Libgen is not Netflix for books, it is thepiratebay for books.
| Libgen is not helpful in discovering more books because if to
| judge about those literature which is abundant on Libgen, the
| technical one, what allows user to discover some books on
| Libgen is only another books or your interest to specific
| scientist or field.
|
| (I know there are a lot of fiction materials on Libgen such as
| comicses but all I use to read is science books or at least
| some non-fiction, so my opinion may be biased).
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Is there a legal alternative? I would really really want
| something like Netflix for books, where I can easily discover
| and read books.
|
| Plenty of books (and other written works, such as serial
| publications) are in the public domain, hence fully legal from
| a copyright POV. However discovery is still a major problem:
| many works in the public domain are still far from being easily
| findable or accessible online. (Even then, it's worth keeping
| in mind that the books people generally think of as the
| 'Greatest Books of the Western Canon' are, by and large, in the
| public domain, and that already is more books than you could
| feasibly read in a lifetime.)
| mmooss wrote:
| The Internet Archive's 'Lending Library' does this, but
| suffered a major blow in the recent copyright case. It's really
| a big advance in human knowledge, and works as simply as you
| say (you need to use their online viewer or an Adobe DRM
| client).
| dansitu wrote:
| Armchair 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.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| > 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.
| zerr wrote:
| Ebook pricing is broken. Sell it for $0.99 and you'll get
| buyers. You can't sell ebooks when it costs only 5-10% less
| than a dead-tree hardcover variant. People don't like being
| ripped off.
| ndiddy wrote:
| Books are far cheaper to print than most people realize. If
| you see a publisher charging 5-10% less for an ebook than a
| physical book, it's because they're pricing the ebook at
| whatever the physical book's price is, minus the printing
| costs.
| folmar wrote:
| Before ebooks came abundant the publishers said some 10% of
| book price is their money, another 10-15% is for author and
| editors, and the rest is eaten up by print and
| distribution+shop. I guess the distribution through
| publishers' site can be done at 20% of sales price.
| dansitu wrote:
| There's a fairly small pool of readers for a niche technical
| book. Selling it for $0.99 won't meaningfully increase the
| number of buyers, and it won't recover enough revenue to meet
| the cost of production.
| adhamsalama wrote:
| I've seen ebooks being sold for more money than the printed
| version.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| That's why you see pulp paperbacks selling for $20+ so that
| the e-book looks like a steal at $15.
| psadauskas wrote:
| If there was a way I could give the authors a few dollars for
| their work, I totally would. Instead in the system we have, I
| have to give a publisher $100 so they can give the author
| $0.50. The publisher uses the money to make rich people richer,
| and scaring people by suing for violating laws that they
| themselves wrote.
|
| Whenever possible, I try to but stuff from the authors &
| creators directly. I haven't been in the market for textbooks
| in a long time, but even 20 years ago it was a ripoff, and it
| seems to have only gotten worse.
| dansitu wrote:
| I'm an author, and the compensation you're quoting is wildly
| low.
|
| Beyond that: I've co-written two reasonably successful
| technical books. The amount of non-writing work that went
| into them is _staggering_ : editing, reviewing, laying them
| out, creating illustrations, translating them into different
| languages, making them available for sale across the world,
| etc. It requires an unbelievable amount of skill, talent, and
| hard work.
|
| The raw draft we hand in looks embarrassing beside the
| finished product.
| psadauskas wrote:
| I certainly appreciate your efforts, and the efforts of
| everyone involved. I know a few authors and copy editors,
| and it seems like an incredible amount of work to deliver
| the finished product.
|
| I suppose my snark was more in reference to the textbook
| market, which seems to be the primary focus of Libgen.
| Academic textbooks seem primarily to be a way to extract
| some student loan money into publishers' pockets, with
| plenty of obvious typos, problems that can't be completed,
| and new editions every year that simply change the order of
| chapters without fixing any of those issues.
|
| When I was a student, in several of my technical classes,
| after every test we'd spend a class correcting the answers
| provided by the textbook that disagreed with more
| authoritative sources. Spending $100 for a book that was
| only half right when I could have bought a real technical
| book for $40 has made me cynical about the whole industry.
| wubrr wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Why? You may think your work is super unique/original/awesome,
| but the reality is 99% of the content of 99% of books is not
| unique or original, and those works wouldn't exist without
| massively relying on and borrowing from other works.
|
| > 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.
|
| There are better ways of supporting work you find important
| than the parasitic publishing industry and copyright.
|
| > maintaining the fragile existence of our greatest technology:
| the book.
|
| Books existed long before publishers and copyright, and seem to
| have survived quite well.
| dansitu wrote:
| > Books existed long before publishers and copyright, and
| seem to have survived quite well.
|
| Who do you think was feeding the monks?
| wubrr wrote:
| I don't really care, but many different people, for many
| different reasons.
|
| You may think this specific example, which you seem to
| think resembles the current publishing industry, negates my
| overall point, but... not even close.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_books#Book_culture
|
| > The authors of antiquity had no rights concerning their
| published works; there were neither authors' nor publishing
| rights. Anyone could have a text recopied, and even alter
| its contents. Scribes earned money and authors earned
| mostly glory unless a patron provided cash; a book made its
| author famous. This followed the traditional concept of the
| culture: an author stuck to several models, which he
| imitated and attempted to improve. The status of the author
| was not regarded as absolutely personal.
| daedrdev wrote:
| > Books existed long before publishers and copyright, and
| seem to have survived quite well.
|
| We are living in the most productive time ever for the book
| industry, I think comparing the current industry to the past
| when we produce several orders of magnitude more works that
| many people highly value is nonsensical.
| wubrr wrote:
| That point was specifically in response to the suggestion
| that we need publishers and copyright for books to exist -
| which is obviously false. Not sure how the size of the
| current industry relates to that point.
| daedrdev wrote:
| I'm saying that even though books would exist without
| copyright and publishers, it allows for several times
| more books to exist by providing an incentive. Authors
| could give their books for free if they really felt that
| it was important for their book to be free.
| wubrr wrote:
| > I'm saying that even though books would exist without
| copyright and publishers, it allows for several times
| more books to exist by providing an incentive.
|
| Having the maximum number of books possible is not really
| something I would consider a success metric. Or do you
| think the endless stream of AI-generated books happening
| right now is a good thing? Also, publishers and copyright
| are not the only way to monetize your work.
|
| > Authors could give their books for free if they really
| felt that it was important for their book to be free.
|
| Can they? Or does the publisher control that right? That
| being said, some of the best technical books/works I've
| read were free.
| daedrdev wrote:
| > Having the maximum number of books possible is not
| really something I would consider a success metric. Or do
| you think the endless stream of AI-generated books
| happening right now is a good thing? Also, publishers and
| copyright are not the only way to monetize your work.
|
| Obviously I think that the combination of value and
| quantity of books today is much higher in the past, you
| don't need to nitpick my phrasing. Additionally, the book
| industry has been in its new peak of written work since
| before AI became good in 2020.
|
| > Can they? Or does the publisher control that right?
| That being said, some of the best technical books/works
| I've read were free.
|
| Its 2024. An author doesn't need a publisher outside of
| academia if they want to publish a book for free. They
| might not have an editor or translator, but those things
| cost money. But most authors like money and since most
| books loose publishers money its not like the author is
| loosing out.
|
| > That being said, some of the best technical books/works
| I've read were free.
|
| I'm glad you liked them. The best fiction works I read I
| paid for, and trust me I've read a lot of free fiction
| works.
| wubrr wrote:
| > Obviously I think that the combination of value and
| quantity of books today is much higher in the past, you
| don't need to nitpick my phrasing.
|
| It's not obvious at all when all you mentioned was
| quantity (two times in a row). And I think the reason
| that was all you mentioned is because that's the only
| 'obvious' increased metric you have.
|
| > Additionally, the book industry has been in its new
| peak of written work since before AI became good in 2020.
|
| Again, you're making claims about 'peak' and 'book
| health', etc. without actually defining what that
| means... is it supposed to be 'obvious'?
|
| > Its 2024. An author doesn't need a publisher outside of
| academia if they want to publish a book for free.
|
| That entirely depends on the situation.
| troyvit wrote:
| > You may think your work is super unique/original/awesome,
| but the reality is 99% of the content of 99% of books is not
| unique or original, and those works wouldn't exist without
| massively relying on and borrowing from other works.
|
| Cool so you won't miss it when libgen is gone then? I mean if
| there's nothing unique or original there then what's to miss
| right?
|
| > Books existed long before publishers and copyright, and
| seem to have survived quite well.
|
| I don't know how else to measure the health of books other
| than measuring the health of publishing, and it doesn't seem
| like it's doing so great:
|
| https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-
| news/p...
|
| I'm not saying the publishing industry is sane or just, but
| how does belittling the work of the authors help anything?
| wubrr wrote:
| > Cool so you won't miss it when libgen is gone then?
|
| I personally won't, because I've never used it. I am 100%
| against it being shut down though.
|
| > I mean if there's nothing unique or original there then
| what's to miss right?
|
| Read my comment again and find the spot where I said
| 'nothing'.
|
| > I don't know how else to measure the health of books
| other than measuring the health of publishing
|
| You can start by defining what 'health of books' even
| means, but your conclusion here seems seriously perverse.
|
| > how does belittling the work of the authors help
| anything?
|
| What is belittling about acknowledging the fact that
| current works (especially technical/non-fiction) heavily
| draw from previous works? The last few technical books I
| read literally had zero original/unique information - they
| were just re-organization/re-phrasing/compilation of other
| works. That's not a bad thing - I think it's great, and the
| books are great, but is that justification for restricting
| access to this information - when it is literally 100%
| based on other works?
| squarefoot wrote:
| Sell them at reasonable prices and people will buy them. Ever
| seen someone photocopying an entire newspaper? Guess what would
| happen if newspapers prices suddenly were inflated to like 50
| bucks.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| The fact that artists/writers pearl clutch over their already
| non lucrative jobs while software folks are gleeful to sell
| their own earning potential out from under themselves shows you
| that artists/writers are wannabe Bolshevik's and that software
| folks are the only honest "egalitarians" out there.
| dml2135 wrote:
| lmao. As a painter-turned-software engineer, this rings true.
| skeaker wrote:
| Blame your publisher.
| bityard wrote:
| On 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| TOR comes with it's own baggage.
| wubrr wrote:
| There 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 wrote:
| You 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.
| franga2000 wrote:
| They're not on TOR because normal people aren't on TOR. We've
| had various ways to distribute files with almost no way of
| getting caught for decades, but they're all a pain in the ass
| to use, requiring at the very least a native client program to
| access, so most people won't ever use them.
| mindslight wrote:
| "The Web" requires a native client program to access, yet
| over time has gained ever wider adoption as "most people"
| come to see the value and realize it's in their interest to
| do what it takes to gain access. We need to be evangelizing
| secure protocols in the same manner, especially as the
| insecure/centralizing protocols become ever more censored.
| brailsafe wrote:
| The Web hasn't required anything beyond what's installed
| for _nearly_ the entirety of my life, and when it wasn 't
| already there, someone would toss a CD at me in the parking
| lot and I'd be golden
| thinkmassive wrote:
| > Why aren't ... operating solely as an onion service on TOR?
|
| > They're not on TOR because
|
| Any downsides to being available on many decentralized
| overlay networks in addition to plain https, other than
| (compute/net/human) resources?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| no advertising $
| chid wrote:
| Do they even have advertising normally?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| yes i believe so
| alex1138 wrote:
| Doesn't z-lib have a kind of hybrid approach where some
| things are available on clearnet but for certain account-
| based features it's TOR?
| ravenstine wrote:
| Tor is part of the problem. It pretends to be an anti-
| censorship/privacy tool, which is kind of true but mostly in
| the sense that it let's you surf the clear-web, which is a
| design flaw that three-letter agencies explout all the time.
| Hidden services are a second class citizen that has a high
| enough barrier of entry that only pirates and pedophiles
| remember they are even a thing most of the time. If it really
| believed in its mission, it would radically redesign itself.
|
| That aside, there really isn't anything stopping apps from
| building in Tor, or ideally I2P, to lower the barrier of
| entry to a truly anonymous network. The end user shouldn't
| even have to know about it. But the profit motive is to not
| even bother because it might make apps slower and 99 percent
| of users don't care.
| mktemp-d wrote:
| You can't just lay out a supposed fact that 99% of users
| don't care about speed without providing some sort of
| citation...
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I think you misread, I read it as 99% of users don't care
| about anonymity
| adhamsalama wrote:
| They wouldn't be as accessible to the average user.
| vasco wrote:
| Does TOR still allow anyone to run relay / exit nodes? It's
| only safe inasmuch as security agencies want to keep using
| their access when they need to.
| Spivak wrote:
| In this case it's not the privacy you need from ToR but
| access so it doesn't really matter if the NSA runs the exit
| nodes because you're not exiting.
| naming_the_user wrote:
| Why should they? They are also on tor.
| ls612 wrote:
| China proved the Great Firewall was possible. It is only a
| matter of time before every nation builds it for the benefit of
| their ruling classes.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Like when they shut down The Pirate Bay in 2006 (and again
| every year since)?
| dang wrote:
| Url changed from 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
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > 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?
| folmar wrote:
| IPFS Companion
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| In a better world, the government would run something like
| libgen. That shit's a public good.
| gardnr wrote:
| Have 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 wrote:
| My 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 wrote:
| There 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 wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| The 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.
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| Ah yes. The amazing service where you have to wait for
| someone else to finish reading an ebook before you are
| allowed to "borrow" it ... because reasons. Because
| obviously reading an ebook is not thread-safe.
|
| As opposed to freely being able to download a PDF on-
| demand regardless of who else is reading it.
| krick wrote:
| I think this should apply to most essential services (and
| libgen absolutely is an essential service; others are E2EE
| messaging and E2EE cloud-hosting). After all, people like to
| imagine (and are often told) that taxes are not a ransom you
| pay to the ruling oligarchy, but almost a donation you almost
| willingly give away for the sake of maintaining public
| infrastructure.
|
| But the key words are "a better world". I don't think this is
| really possible in, uh, this world. Imagining a world like that
| is a bit like a soviet utopian-fantasy book about the world of
| established communism. "Sounds Good, Doesn't Work".
|
| To be fair, though, if "the government" you are talking about
| is the one of the USA, I thinks loc.gov is pretty great stuff.
| I mean, it's pretty shit compared to what somebody like "the
| Anna" could do with this amount of resources, and it isn't
| really made in a way to make researching, copying and saving
| stuff locally easy, but still, I'd love if every country
| maintained something like that (at least). Lots of relatively
| rare interesting stuff out there.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| I don't really agree it's unachievable, just a matter of
| political will imo. All that would have to happen is enough
| public interest to outweigh publisher lobbying.
| mhh__ wrote:
| The really annoying thing is that libgen is often the only place
| one can actually get a book.
| teekert wrote:
| Right?! 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 wrote:
| I 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?
| saulrh wrote:
| Even when you're in a major international market like the
| United States it's frequently the case that books are nearly
| unavailable, 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 completely unobtainable.
| trollied wrote:
| "While this is a win on paper, it's unlikely that the publishers
| will get paid by the LibGen operators, who remain anonymous."
| enriquto wrote:
| Is 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 wrote:
| There exist torrent archives of everything on libgen, you can
| theoretically download the whole catalog. I think it's their
| backup strategy.
| throawayonthe wrote:
| libgen is backed up by annas-archive and you can help seed the
| torrents https://annas-archive.org/datasets https://annas-
| archive.org/torrents
| squigz wrote:
| Not entirely sure why this was dead. This is the answer to
| GP's question.
| uptownfunk wrote:
| This is so messed up.
| ak_111 wrote:
| libgen 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.
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