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Z-Library Aftermath Reveals the Feds Seized Dozens of Domain Names

torrentfreak.com

41–50 of 75 posts

Re: Z-Library Aftermath Reveals the Feds Seized Dozens of Domain Names

#41

I hate to say this, but the DNS system is the problem here. What are the alternatives?

So far I've seen OpenNIC[1] mentioned in this thread. I have it bookmarked because I think it's a really neat project. If there are others I'd like to know about them.

1: https://www.opennic.org/

Re: Z-Library Aftermath Reveals the Feds Seized Dozens of Domain Names

#42
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have been a godsend when I was still academic. This and sci-hub. The way they eviscerated the service makes clear that in general we need more robust web services. Tor is not ideal for this, onions are excellent and fill their niche really well. But we need something simpler here.

What is needed is a strong government for the people, by the people. Without that, it really doesn't matter what tech you can cobble together.

We're discussing an instance of regulatory capture. Granting the government more powers - that are available for special interests to capture - ends up digging an even deeper hole.

Re: Z-Library Aftermath Reveals the Feds Seized Dozens of Domain Names

#44
post #2

I've personally used sites like this as a sort of protest to what universities and authors did to the textbook market. You used to be able to buy used physical textbooks for classes at reasonable prices. They took advantage of the shift to digital by forcing arbitrary changes in edition numbers, solely to sell more books, or by requiring obscure, low-volume books, often written by the professor leading the class. Wit…

Isn't it mainly publishers who are responsible for that?

I think authors get a pittance. I recall a professor getting something like $600 to write a chapter in a molecular pathology textbook back in 2008.

Re: Z-Library Aftermath Reveals the Feds Seized Dozens of Domain Names

#45
post #2

I've personally used sites like this as a sort of protest to what universities and authors did to the textbook market. You used to be able to buy used physical textbooks for classes at reasonable prices. They took advantage of the shift to digital by forcing arbitrary changes in edition numbers, solely to sell more books, or by requiring obscure, low-volume books, often written by the professor leading the class. Wit…

Oh, absurd prices for textbooks is not something that came from the digital shift. I had textbooks that were over $100 when I was an undergraduate. And that was in the late 1980s!

But did it have a code for accessing online homework assignments that only worked once and made it useless to resell because next semester's students had to buy a new copy in order to submit homework?

It's been a racket for a long time, but it's gotten much worse recently.

Re: Z-Library Aftermath Reveals the Feds Seized Dozens of Domain Names

#46
> Not all known Z-Library domains are currently offline. The login portal ‘singlelogin.me’ and booksc.me, for example, remain online. These domains are registered through the Finnish company Sarek Oy, which is affiliated with Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde.

Nice. Long fly the pirate flags.

Re: Z-Library Aftermath Reveals the Feds Seized Dozens of Domain Names

#47
I had been using z-lib as a way of "format shifting" some of my books. I live in a small apartment. My books take up too much space. For some, I've found the PDF on z-lib and thrown out the hardcopy.

I don't think that is immoral in any way. (And I'm pretty sure it's not illegal -- but IANAL).

Re: Z-Library Aftermath Reveals the Feds Seized Dozens of Domain Names

#48
post #2

I've personally used sites like this as a sort of protest to what universities and authors did to the textbook market. You used to be able to buy used physical textbooks for classes at reasonable prices. They took advantage of the shift to digital by forcing arbitrary changes in edition numbers, solely to sell more books, or by requiring obscure, low-volume books, often written by the professor leading the class. Wit…

It would have been a godsend when I was still academic. This and sci-hub. The way they eviscerated the service makes clear that in general we need more robust web services. Tor is not ideal for this, onions are excellent and fill their niche really well. But we need something simpler here.

Eviscerated? The onion is indistinguishable from the clearnet site, with the exception that you need to log in. Disposable mail makes account creation trivial.

Re: Z-Library Aftermath Reveals the Feds Seized Dozens of Domain Names

#49
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The full archive is also not that big (~30TB) so they are plenty of mirrors. " Like where? Zlibrary wasn't open for 'official' mirrors in the first place, and the 'unofficial mirror' hasn't had any seeders for its torrents since at least the seizure of the domains last week.

Zibrary is/was essentially a different frontend for libgen content. If you look for libgen archives, it is indeed mirrored.

Maybe 80% of it is. Zlibrary, rather greedily, accepts its own individual uploads and does not mirror them to libgen anymore. Probably due to their monetization policies.

Re: Z-Library Aftermath Reveals the Feds Seized Dozens of Domain Names

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have been a godsend when I was still academic. This and sci-hub. The way they eviscerated the service makes clear that in general we need more robust web services. Tor is not ideal for this, onions are excellent and fill their niche really well. But we need something simpler here.

aren't tor and onion pairs,why one not ideal while another excellent? confused.

I just butchered the sentence.

Tor/Onion addresses are great at what they do, but not appropriate to solve this problem.

It's basically ideal for drug dealing when infrequently small amounts of data are exchanged and a crypto payment made.

Not idea for frequently accessing large chunks of data 1-100mb PDFs.

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