Man, fuck this.
Z-library founders arrested in Argentina
51–60 of 498 posts
Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina
#52IIRC 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.
> Z-Library is a popular (and illegal) library. They have taken the Library Genesis collection and made it easily searchable. On top of that, they have become very effective at soliciting new book contributions, by incentivizing contributing users with various perks. They currently do not contribute these new books back to Library Genesis. And unlike Library Genesis, they do not make their collection easily mirrorabl…
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Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina
#53A 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?
I'm sure e.g. Walmart would have few billions in their name.
Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina
#54I 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…
Your geographical white privilege is showing.
Getting access to books for instance in SEA or Africa is an entirely different story to one of the richest countries in the world with some of the highest standards of living (in your case Sweden but could apply to most EU/NA/AU/NZ).
I would say the vast majority pirating couldn't afford the work in the first place, meaning nothing is lost from the perspective of the author. It's not a sale stolen, it's someone that would otherwise simply go without.
Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina
#55I 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…
> but e-books can be purchased pretty much anywhere in the world.
English and local books at least. Can I easily buy Swedish-language books in Germany? I really don't know.
Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina
#56> As alleged, the defendants profited illegally off work they stole How did they profit? If they even admitted that > Defendants Operated Z-Library, Which Offered Free Download of Copyrighted Works This is a complete nonsense
downloads were limited to a small number per day. if you wanted to download more there was a small fee ($1?). They tracked her Amazon account which had made $14k in purchases over the years.
Curious where you heard the detail about Amazon
Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Imagine the person who cannot afford a book or paper on a particular topic. Should they not have access to the information? Imagine I want whatever you do for a living? Should you work for me for free?
That analogy doesn’t work when the marginal cost to do that work is literally zero, in fact he wouldn’t even know he’s performing the “work”
The key question is, what proportion of zlibrary users would have purchased the books legitimately if piracy didn't exist, or would have been able to afford it? Anecdotally I suspect most pirates have little income for books but I can't find data on this.
Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina
#58Z-library was not about freeing books, they where pirating for profit. The free account was limited in downloads and they had 2 tiers of premium accounts, don't remember the sums or details. They where profiting on the works of others too, they did not rip the books themselves or anything like that.
The free tier was something like 5 books per day and was throttled by ip. How many books do you usually read per day that this argument holds any kind of meaning? They throttled it, sure … but that wasn’t really a rate in which you’d run into unless you’re just downloading everything. Which you still could just by cycling your ip. You also didn’t need an account unless you wanted to send the book directly to your Kin…
Free tier is 10 books per day. They really have a nice search and related books view making discovery easy. Lot of people will miss z library.
Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina
#59What happened to "you get what you pay for" and "if you're not the customer you are the product"? We already know what happens with free content on the internet: it turns to shit. And no, wikipedia or open source are not models you can apply to most books. The ones you can, we already have them: free programming books and the sorts.
Do you want books to be the next low effort, low quality, ads ridden, ideology pushing, click bait, spam, micro transactions, gambling medium? Asking for them to be free (as in beer) is the way to go.
Another thing: as a long time pirate from a poor country myself I never understood the need to morally justify piracy. I do it because I want to spend money elsewhere, not because I feel it is my right or it should be. I do it because I can and I profit from it. My head will not explode with cognitive dissonance if I accept I am wronging others to help myself.
Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina
#60First time heard about Z-library. The home page design seems like a scam page though.
It is a gate to the great knowledge.