Z-Library is still accessible via TOR. You may find and onion-URL in Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-Library
It looks to now have been removed. Update: it's back. You're a good man, Charlie Brown.
ZLibrary domains have been seized by the United States Postal Inspection Service
421–430 of 543 posts
Re: ZLibrary domains have been seized by the United States Postal Inspection Service
#422Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed, it is a reasonable assumption that it will get more valuable over time, as it is a scarce resource.
Gold is extremely common in the solar system. In the next few hundred years it's pretty likely that gold price will be marginal, as asteroid miners looking for less useless materials such as nickel, cobalt and platinum mine an excess. So no, unless for some hidden reason asteroid mining doesn't work out, which is pretty unlikely given how badly the developed world needs that material.
This thread reminds me of a Twilight Zone episode.
Re: ZLibrary domains have been seized by the United States Postal Inspection Service
#423Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably 'I want to archive books'. Not 'I want end to end privacy for anyone clicking on my plain text site with a few torrent links.
TLS doesn't matter / isn't needed here right? The IP address is still in the header from what I understand. So the only thing https can hide is the content, such as a credit card or password that you enter into the site. The fact that it's a plaintext website that doesn't change means that the exact same information is encoded in simply giving the IP address as there is in knowing that someone looked around the site…
> So the only thing https can hide is the content, such as a credit card or password that you enter into the site.
TLS is not only for hiding the content, it's also for authentication: it ensures that no malicious middle party can modify the content, for instance to inject malicious Javascript (for an example of this happening, read about the "Great Cannon" attack on GitHub).
Re: ZLibrary domains have been seized by the United States Postal Inspection Service
#424Earlier quoted context omitted.
> why do we need "publishers" in today's market? Distributing and marketing a book still takes expertise.
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
I've always said that onlyfans is one of the more ethical platforms; there's less of a question of who gets paid and how.
Re: ZLibrary domains have been seized by the United States Postal Inspection Service
#425Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 sendin…
> they'll be carved and stored deep underground. But of course you need some marker then on the ground so people know where to look for it later if they want to read the data. Maybe some artwork? A giant monolith perhaps?
A giant pyramid, they can last thousands of years even in our aggressive environment, much more in the weak Martian weather.
Re: ZLibrary domains have been seized by the United States Postal Inspection Service
#426Earlier quoted context omitted.
So essentially, we have a system where a public entity (public libraries) is compensating authors for creating works that are popular. But going through a middle man (the publisher, and possibly one or more distributors) that takes a considerable cut. In the digital age, why not cut out the middle man? Have a publicly funded e-library that pays authors directly based on how often their content is downloaded.
The publisher will have signed an agreement with the author, and also spent plenty of money on editing, typesetting, marketing. You can't just arbitrarily decide that only one party "deserves" to make money from the book, and doing so would probably lead to a lawsuit.
Sure, but that whole deal of "publisher signed an agreement with the author" only exists because publishers used to be necessary. They're not now.
Yes, you shouldn't arbitrarily decide anything. You can today, however, meaningfully conclude that "publishers are kind of useless, how are they still in business when much of what they do isn't necessary?" You'll find the answer is probably old law.
So, yes -- bring on the lawsuits. Let's see what happens.
Re: ZLibrary domains have been seized by the United States Postal Inspection Service
#427Earlier 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…
A multi-billion year backup is probably pointless. The earth will be uninhabitable in that time frame due to changes in the atmosphere and beyond that the sun itself will complete it's lifecycle. I know there's a big fad to "just believe" in a SF future that spans space and time but physical realities in this area are pretty rough. I think the best thing people could do is realise that, eventually, everything ends an…
Doomer fatalism is nearly as dumb as sci-fi optimism. It's 100% physically plausible, using technology we have today, to make humanity star-faring. The costs would be exorbitant at this point, but within the reach of human productive capacity (assuming we're willing to ditch the partial nuclear test ban).
Re: ZLibrary domains have been seized by the United States Postal Inspection Service
#428Earlier quoted context omitted.
A multi-billion year backup is probably pointless. The earth will be uninhabitable in that time frame due to changes in the atmosphere and beyond that the sun itself will complete it's lifecycle. I know there's a big fad to "just believe" in a SF future that spans space and time but physical realities in this area are pretty rough. I think the best thing people could do is realise that, eventually, everything ends an…
Doomer fatalism is nearly as dumb as sci-fi optimism. It's 100% physically plausible, using technology we have today , to make humanity star-faring. The costs would be exorbitant at this point, but within the reach of human productive capacity (assuming we're willing to ditch the partial nuclear test ban).
The costs are not the problem.
We can barely get to the Moon and have no realistic prospect of making a self-sustaining Mars colony any time soon.
How is it credible to claim we can build starships that can cross lightyears without technological or sociopolitical problems?
The engines - which we're nowhere close to creating - are the easy part.
Re: ZLibrary domains have been seized by the United States Postal Inspection Service
#429Well, the one good thing about this is it has forced me to learn about Tor and to download the Tor browser. I'd heard about Tor before, but never really looked into it.
Re: ZLibrary domains have been seized by the United States Postal Inspection Service
#430Earlier quoted context omitted.
It blows my mind that in a hypercapitalist society like the US, that copyrights still exist. Copyrights are a massive violation of property rights, criminalizing merely observing something and independently reproducing it with your own private materials for your own non-commercial use. IMO it shakes to the core free market, capitalist, and founding principles of our nation.
Weirdly, I'm OP, and I disagree. Fundamentally, without them, you get more situations like what's going on with Stable Diffusion and Copilot (and perhaps Spotify and Google before them) -- the people who own the machinery end up owning and controlling EVERYTHING, and the creator gets nothing. There's no actual "free market" in the way you're thinking of. Thumbs will always be on scales.
>There's no actual "free market" in the way you're thinking of. Thumbs will always be on scales.
I don't follow this argument. Principles can't be replicated perfectly in reality, therefore they don't exist? By that logic, there is no actual "copyright" as some people will be copying material and getting away with it.
>the people who own the machinery end up owning and controlling EVERYTHING, and the creator gets nothing.
This is proven wrong through any single example to the contrary. One example is ticketed book readings by the original author, or a ticketed concert by the original band. Many ways to capture income for generating content without copyright enforcement mechanisms.
>what's going on with Stable Diffusion and Copilot (and perhaps Spotify and Google before them) -- the people who own the machinery end up owning and controlling EVERYTHING, and the creator gets nothing.
Is this an argument for or against copyright? Does Google get most of its operating revenue within nations without copyright law? Or is the argument they are violating copyright law and that's why the creator isn't getting anything?
And there are counter examples, where a creator sells/relinquishes copyright (often because it's the only way for them to end up with anything) and ends up losing total access to income streams they could have had if copyright didn't exist, and the machinery owner ends up owning everything and locking the creator out through copyright law. The confusion also lies in the fact creator and copyright holder is not the same thing.