Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.wired.com/2012/03/feds-seize-foreign-sites/
So they need a ".ru" domain, or some us-unfriendly country then?
Russian authorities blocked some zlib domains in the past, so "ru" may be not suitable.
ZLibrary domains have been seized by the United States Postal Inspection Service
291–300 of 543 posts
Re: ZLibrary domains have been seized by the United States Postal Inspection Service
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is wrong with that, especially as it facilitates the creator's being able to earn income from their irreplaceable work?
One could argue that the whole purpose of society is to get rid of scarcity. Creators being unable to earn income is a problem - but artificial scarcity is not a good solution, as it benefits the few at the expense of many. Imagine if everyone was prohibited from sharing news over internet because "free distribution of news harms the journalists who rely on newspaper sales" - that'd be absurd, wouldn't it? Old-school…
> One could argue that the whole purpose of society is to get rid of scarcity.
Scarcity of resources has nothing to do with scarcity of artistic works. Literature isn't fungible like a commodity, and can't be grown or mined as needed. It's also not a professional service or a form of labor. You can't put a gun to a farmer's head and make them write something brilliant, the way you can make them farm potatoes.
One could just as easily argue that society exists to organize labor in a way that increases specialization and efficiency. The reduction of scarcity is just a side effect. Specialization breeds scarcity in every new speciality until it becomes universally reproducible. Art is the forwardmost outcropping of specialization - it exists in advance of what it describes being known or understood - and by definition it is always the most scarce speciality. The artifice in making distribution of it remain difficult is therefore an extension of the natural place of scarce ideas in a world of abundant things.
Re: ZLibrary domains have been seized by the United States Postal Inspection Service
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
Similar is the case from people who can't afford. They are not asking you to give it for free. What they want is that the information accessible at affordable prices. The current situation is an ABC book either cost $10-$20-$30 or they can get it pirated. there is no middle ground. People move to piracy due to lack of affordability and options.
Ah, the downvotes from the extremely privileged (most of whom do not even realize this). I am from one of those countries where we pretty much cannot afford "legal" content. In my shitty town the median salary is something like $300, at least half of which goes towards paying rent if you don't have your own house, while we're being asked to pay prices that were established for developed countries with median salaries…
Interesting. I don’t know where you’re from. But in India, usually publishers publish an Exclusive to South Asian market version of the book which costs around $4-$20.
For example, The Pragmatic Programmer costs $10 in Indian stores, while it costs $50 in US.
Re: ZLibrary domains have been seized by the United States Postal Inspection Service
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
ah, so the one who is supposed to make money from his/her skill is given pittance while distribution and marketing people take the cake. fine. edit: if onlyfans can allow questionable skills be monetized and give millions to the um, performers, surely an author can find a way to sell their own books themselves
> the one who is supposed to make money from his/her skill is given pittance while distribution and marketing people take the cake You may want to read on the economics of publishing instead of working off assumptions [1]. Scientific publishers are a scam. But trade fiction and nonfiction publishing isn’t a moneymaker. [1] https://www.almostanauthor.com/the-economics-of-publishing/
i need some numbers... $100 book(fiction for ease of understanding), how much does each entity in the chain from author to consumer earns?
if that is the economics, where does digital books and audibooks fare? why do you need the intermediaries in that thing? same for amazon? its not like i HAVE to pay a printer to publish a digital ebook so if that is removed from the pie, shouldn't the author "get" that portion also?
Re: ZLibrary domains have been seized by the United States Postal Inspection Service
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
Holy shit! Did not see this coming, but glad we saved this collection just in time. (I'm Anna, the one who made the backup). We are working on hosting this collection, as well as saving other large collections. Please consider supporting us, donation details at http://pilimi.org (we'll set up a patreon-like system soon)
Thank you so much for your efforts! I have steadily become convinced that we should make a multi-billion year backup of all of humanity's knowledge. All of it. Something that, - is resilient (can survive a nuclear explosion) - requires no power - doesn't require software to read/reboot from - (theoretically) lasts for at least 1 billion years Copying from the Long Now Foundation's projects, I think we can achieve the…
> 6.7 million plates will probably weigh a lot. So off-world copies might need to use an alternative encoding scheme.
For the Moon and Mars, carve them into stone there. You'll have to defend against meteor strikes so they'll be carved and stored deep underground. No idea about seismic activity on those bodies.
For outer space, maybe it's pointless because finding, boarding, unloading an interstellar probe and sending the cargo back home is not easy unless you have very advanced interstellar ships. An orbit around the sun could be an easier place to spot. The Library of Ceres or the Library of the Troians?
Re: ZLibrary domains have been seized by the United States Postal Inspection Service
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quoted post unavailable.
Personally, I use libgen to check if I actually want a given book, and if I do, I buy it (a physical copy, if possible). So, for me, it's a kind of a virtual bookshop.
I do the same, i live in germany and wanted a book from UK, sadly it has 4-5 weeks delivery time but our vacation was a week away. So i downloaded the book, read it on our vacation and had the physical copy a few weeks later deliverd. Later i bought the book a second time when the german version released. With another book i bought for my wife and wanted to read at the same time, i downloaded it and we could both read it and talk about it simultaneously. Some other time i wanted to read a book at home with a physical copy and on my kindle during some time when i was outside in the garden. Cause in a hammock the kindle is easier to hold. Every time i had purchased the physical copy and the illegal download was just for convenience. No harm done.
Re: ZLibrary domains have been seized by the United States Postal Inspection Service
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you so much for your efforts! I have steadily become convinced that we should make a multi-billion year backup of all of humanity's knowledge. All of it. Something that, - is resilient (can survive a nuclear explosion) - requires no power - doesn't require software to read/reboot from - (theoretically) lasts for at least 1 billion years Copying from the Long Now Foundation's projects, I think we can achieve the…
6.5 million plates at $500 each is 3 billion, not 35 million. Just don't make them look gold (even if they're not solid gold), or they'll get looted and melted. Though it would be fun if a murderous warlord ended up with a gotten crown made of the Wikipedia article for toilet paper orientation. [1] [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper_orientation
i think it's a brave assumption that gold will forever be as valuable as now.
Re: ZLibrary domains have been seized by the United States Postal Inspection Service
#298The mental gymnastics happening in this thread to justify pirating books is pretty disappointing. Especially on HN, where I think a lot of our livelihoods depend on writing and charging for closed source code that can technically be infinitely distributed. How many of us would be happy to open source all our code, provide easy ways for people to download and deploy, and then leave a PayPal link in the footer asking f…
Copyright should be 5-10 years tops if that at all.
I work at a large national library and teach at a university, so have to deal with copyright issues every day. Everyone agrees copyright is broken.
I release all my personal code under MIT license, and if someone does want to violate that license by not attributing me I am completely fine with that.
Re: ZLibrary domains have been seized by the United States Postal Inspection Service
#299What surprised me was that there is something called "United States Postal Inspection Service" that has some police-like law enforcement powers. Every so often you TIL something about the US.
Wait til you hear about the UK's Post Office wrongly prosecuting dozens of people based on its arcane technical position as a prosecutor, held since 1683 but very rarely used
Re: ZLibrary domains have been seized by the United States Postal Inspection Service
#300Fortunately someone had the foresight to make a backup: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32972923 Z-library were in it for commercial gain (you could access a certain number of books but to get more you had to pay for a subscription). They started out as a fork of library genesis, whose mission has always been strictly non-commercial and about providing free access to everyone without limits. Hopefully this will…
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