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Z-library founders arrested in Argentina

justice.gov

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Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina

#111

Post by josh_fyi »

I was delighted when my book showed up on Z-library! I of course was never paid for authoring that book; indeed I paid a subvention to publish it with Harvard University Press. At some point, the rights were sold to the giant publisher Brill, which was charging $30 per chapter for a book that has no value by chapter.

Luckily, some kind soul at University of Marburg uploaded it and Library Genesis still has it.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/141915/

https://libgen.is/search.php?req=Joshua%20Fox&column[]=autho...

Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina

#112

Post by joxel »

cies wrote: post #87
zb1plus wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't agree more. It is disgraceful how our tax dollars are used to prop up failed business models and oppress the little guy. Just another example of how supposedly democratic states only serve the interests of the elite.

[flagged]

At least the anti-democracy party didn’t name themselves after democracy. That would’ve been an even worse joke.

Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina

#113

Post by WeylandYutani »

dimva wrote: post #84
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #21

A 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…

Wage theft is committed by millions of employers, this "theft" was committed by just a few people. While I agree with your general sentiment, the resources required to prosecute wage theft would be vastly greater than to prosecute this case. That being said, they should definitely prosecute wage theft much more than they are now. Maybe the fear of jail time if wage theft were actually prosecuted a few times would det…

In my country wage theft is committed on migrant labour.

Western Europe is not much different than Quatar in that respect only nobody cares.

Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina

#115

Post by deathgripsss »

pkoird wrote: post #105
mirzap wrote: post #41

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.

Their free model was much more than enough for a regular user to use. I mean 10 books download per day? I'm not sure if I personally would have had to ever exceed that limit.

I didn't even realise there was a limit. I used to get a couple of books a month. Never close to 10 a day.

Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina

#116

Post by mavhc »

nathell wrote: post #70
null_object wrote: post #9

I 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 think we can have our cake and eat it too. https://blog.danieljanus.pl/2022/09/24/paying-for-books/

This is the simplest solution, get a drm ebook, and pay the person who wrote it directly, they'll get way more money from you that way than if you bought the book

Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina

#117

Post by splistud »

jliptzin wrote: post #26
null_object wrote: post #16

Earlier 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”

No post body was provided.

Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina

#118

Post by [deleted] »

leephillips wrote: post #103
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #21

A 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…

What these criminals were doing is wage theft. As someone who earns money from books, I would like to personally thank the US Justice Department for their excellent work in shutting down this operation, that was stealing my wages.

[deleted]

Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina

#119

Post by ccbccccbbcccbb »

smeagull wrote: post #30
null_object wrote: post #9

I 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…

It's human culture. The idea that it should be the sole provenance of rich multi-nationals to decide who can afford to read is disgusting. It should all be freely accessible. Removing money from the equation would also solve other quality issues.

So let's totally remove the heat-transfer agent from the thermodynamic machine of society and instead rely on an army of maxwell demons to decide how much food and floor space each human element in the system should be given for its work, right?

That was called 'communism', had been attempted to implement, resulted in millions of deaths and miserably failed regardless due to the physics of the process.

The heat transfer agent is not the problem per se, it's the ability of some entities to create it out of thin air and pump into the system, as well as shady mechanisms of its distribution.

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