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Z-library founders arrested in Argentina

justice.gov

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Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina

#3

Post by jerojero »

elashri wrote: post #2

> 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

Maybe ads on the platfom? I'm not sure because 1. i use libgen 2. i run adblock.

But it wouldn't be surprising that such a popular platform would have ads. Z-library was a site for pirated e-books, no?

Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina

#4

Post by gnrlst »

elashri wrote: post #2

> 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

I believe they also offered premium plans and for the longest time had a big banner on their site saying something like: "if you know of high risk payment processors, please reach out"

Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina

#9

Post by null_object »

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 e-books can be purchased pretty much anywhere in the world. I'm in Sweden but buy most of my e-books from the US. But often buy books directly from publishers (hopefully they, and the author, get a better cut that way).

The fact these people were trying to personally profit (some other HN:ers have documented this), while trying to present themselves as some sort of "information wants to be free" info-warriors doesn't make the whole thing any better.

An enormous amount of work goes into producing a book - through a close friend who works in book-publishing I know a couple of authors who pretty much starve for a year or two to produce their work - and then the editing, typesetting, designing, proof-reading etc is all an enormous and personal investment.

In spite of what people think, authors are not all budding J.K.Rowlings with movie-deals and a couple of billion in the bank, and if we don't buy their books, they won't be able to produce the next one for people to pirate.

Re: Z-library founders arrested in Argentina

#10

Post by fragmede »

elashri wrote: post #2

> 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.
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