Live data from Hacker News

Pirate Library Mirror: Preserving 7TB of books (that are not in Libgen)

pilimi.org

51–60 of 438 posts

Re: Pirate Library Mirror: Preserving 7TB of books (that are not in Libgen)

#51

It's really funny to think about how the advances of technology keeps changing how we perceive books. 7TB is even a commodity disk these days. And it's a lot less than the torrent of scientific papers that floated around some time ago (that was ~18TB IIRC).

I foresee storage density reaching the point that for most ordinary people "online" becomes rather unimportant. What would be the effects of technology when computers behave as in early science fiction, as stand-alone oracles? [1]

[1] https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/2048-informatio...

Re: Pirate Library Mirror: Preserving 7TB of books (that are not in Libgen)

#52

To be fair, Z-Library doesn't charge unless you want to download more than 10 books per 24 hour period. That's per account and although they ask you not to open multiple accounts they don't seem to do anything to stop you.

What kind of fairness can there be in charging for stolen books? I believe in free access to education, but charging for these books they have no rights to is a whole other thing.

Running costs.

Re: Pirate Library Mirror: Preserving 7TB of books (that are not in Libgen)

#53
post #27

So, if I get it right. First there was Libgen, which is mirrorable. Then, some Z-Library copied Libgen and added some more books, without making it mirrorable. The goal is to make these new books, which are not mirrorable — mirrorable (i.e. to "preserve" them). So, why not just re-upload them to Libgen, then? I guess somebody will do that now anyway, but you could easily done it in the first place, without making you…

From their FAQ:

> Q: Should the Z-Library collection be added to Library Genesis?

> A: Yes! However, it is tricky. Library Genesis splits out its collection between non-fiction and fiction. They also have relatively high quality standards. If you are interested in organizing all the books to meet their requirements, let us know.

Re: Pirate Library Mirror: Preserving 7TB of books (that are not in Libgen)

#54
post #27

So, if I get it right. First there was Libgen, which is mirrorable. Then, some Z-Library copied Libgen and added some more books, without making it mirrorable. The goal is to make these new books, which are not mirrorable — mirrorable (i.e. to "preserve" them). So, why not just re-upload them to Libgen, then? I guess somebody will do that now anyway, but you could easily done it in the first place, without making you…

[deleted]

Re: Pirate Library Mirror: Preserving 7TB of books (that are not in Libgen)

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really want your ISP to know which piracy sites you frequent? This is all being sent in plain text. Or they could change the content, insert a redirect, or inject ads without your knowledge. TLS is needed on all websites - not just those with interaction.

I hate to break it to you, but why do you think ISPs override the DNS responses with TTL set to 0? TLS itself is only useful if you also rely on DNS over HTTPS/TLS. Well, setting the issues with TLS 1.2 and earlier aside.

Those are problems too, but they aren't exploited nearly as often as MITMing cleartext has been historically. The solution you mention is already becoming widely-supported, as are newer protocols like QUIC that discourage snooping.

There's no reason to ignore a good solution just because it's not 100% perfect.

Re: Pirate Library Mirror: Preserving 7TB of books (that are not in Libgen)

#57

To be fair, Z-Library doesn't charge unless you want to download more than 10 books per 24 hour period. That's per account and although they ask you not to open multiple accounts they don't seem to do anything to stop you.

What kind of fairness can there be in charging for stolen books? I believe in free access to education, but charging for these books they have no rights to is a whole other thing.

It would depend on how they use the funds. I wouldn't be surprised if bandwidth expenses made up a majority of what it cost to run Z-Library and that money has to come from somewhere.

Re: Pirate Library Mirror: Preserving 7TB of books (that are not in Libgen)

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they can serve you anything they want. Great. More books! No really, I don't understand this argument. A static site served by plain http is perfectly appropriate. It's like a poster hanging on the wall for all to see. Of course people can paint over it, but it doesn't really matter.

They could serve you javascript that exploits your browser. At the very least, they could replace that bitcoin donation address with their own. That's a tempting target if nothing else.

And "they" isn't just your ISP. It's also that free wifi hotspot you connected to, or the hotel service, or your company's network. Even if you trust your ISP (and you probably shouldn't), there are other bad actors to be aware of.

Re: Pirate Library Mirror: Preserving 7TB of books (that are not in Libgen)

#59
post #30

HTTP-only makes me weary of visiting a self-professed piracy site. They couldn't even spring for a Let's Encrypt cert?

*wary For some reason I'm seeing this mistake more and more lately. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/weary vs https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wary

I've seen it too, and it's a weird mistake to me because I am certain that at least one of my friends who makes the mistake did not make it in the past.

I wonder if there's a kind of memetic effect happening online, where people who lack confidence in their English spelling ability see somebody make this mistake and somehow think that it's correct, so they switch how they write it.

Post reply on HN