How much prison time they face? I'm not sad about them. They did it for the money, not because they believed knowledge should be free. They basically stole other people work and put their paywall to access stolen books. Total opposite of Libgen or Sci-Hub.
Z-library founders arrested in Argentina
41–50 of 498 posts
Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina
#42I know this won't be a popular take on HN, but while I can understand and to a certain extent sympathize with pirating movies (the intentional friction and arbitrary geographic limitations on access imposed by the multinational movie-industry conglomerates), I can't see stealing some poor author's work in the same light. Sure, people get hung-up about DRM (which can easily be removed by widely-accessible tools), but…
Artificial scarcity is still bad. Imagine a world where books are free for everybody, not just for people who live in prosperous areas with good libraries. Would you then advocate making books nonfree thereby placing books out of reach for 2/3rd of the world population, which is more or less where we are today?
> Imagine a world where books are free for everybody
I imagine it will go the same way of the other internet content that is free: adds, spam, clickbait, low quality, etc.
Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina
#43The American Empire strikes again.
You'd think they would have seen this coming though.
I think a long-term solution is a universal revenue-sharing programme - so like some portion of taxes is allocated to a universal repository, and then paid out to creators according to usage. No middle-men and no distribution issues, etc.
Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina
#44They are so young! Does anyone know what will happen to them after the arrestment? I sincerely think they are doing charity.
No doubt they'll be chucked in a supermax prison in the arse-end of nowhere for fifty years.
Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina
#45A small thought experiment: - Book sales in 2021 were about _9_ billion dollars. [0] - Wage theft in the US is estimated at _50_ billion dollars. [1] Can you imagine if the resources of the justice and labour departments would prioritize citizen wage over publishers' revenue? Would you rather have funds allocated towards social justice or have them spent on intimidating foreign nationals completely outside US jurisdi…
But piracy affects the capitalists that run the US establishment, whereas wage theft benefits them.
Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina
#46IIRC Z-library is a LibGen mirror that is faster than other mirrors but is also much more monetized with more ads, limited free downloads, and premium plans. Something else weird about this story is why did they move to a country that has an extradition agreement with the US? There are plenty of countries that would ignore US pressure to arrest them.
I don't know their specific reasons, but I know of some transnational companies that since the start of the russian invasion dissolved their russian division and told their employees to choose from a list of countries to relocate.
Argentina is very easy to migrate to (the preamble to our constitution marks the spirit of a nation "free for all men that want to live here") and quality of life isn't that bad.
Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina
#47Now, do SBF.
Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina
#48A small thought experiment: - Book sales in 2021 were about _9_ billion dollars. [0] - Wage theft in the US is estimated at _50_ billion dollars. [1] Can you imagine if the resources of the justice and labour departments would prioritize citizen wage over publishers' revenue? Would you rather have funds allocated towards social justice or have them spent on intimidating foreign nationals completely outside US jurisdi…
I agree with you, but it's always easier to go after a centralized target who is doing a thing at scale. Is there a wage-thief who's doing it at scale?
Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina
#49I know this won't be a popular take on HN, but while I can understand and to a certain extent sympathize with pirating movies (the intentional friction and arbitrary geographic limitations on access imposed by the multinational movie-industry conglomerates), I can't see stealing some poor author's work in the same light. Sure, people get hung-up about DRM (which can easily be removed by widely-accessible tools), but…
I bought a Kobo for its easy public library integration. Jokes on me. My public library doesn't have most of the books I want, and the way ebooks are leased to public libraries is a disgrace-- something I only found out after buying the Kobo. So, what's a guy to do? I buy the books wherever I can find them at the cheapest price (usually on the used market, sometimes via Kindle store, sometimes via Kobo store). Then, I pirate it, since that's a much more convenient way to get a DRM-free format that actually works on my device.
In my case, at least, I paid for every z-library book I ever downloaded--with one exception. Z-library also made it easy to browse books the way you would in a physical book store. Sometimes, you think, "Looks interesting." You open it up, read a few pages and realize, "Not for me." Z-library was a good way to do this.
Both of those are legitimate use cases. Probably not the most common use case, but it sure was handy, and now I've got to find a replacement.
Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina
#50First time heard about Z-library. The home page design seems like a scam page though.