https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/07/report-z-library-admins-on-the-lam-ahead-of-us-extradition-officials-shocked/
Z-Library defends admins and vows to expand access after domain seizures.
Random novels =/= knowledge.
I'm totally supporting sci-hub and it's quest for free access to academia, but contemporary books aren't on the same level. Writers deserve to be paid.
Classics are all in the public domain anyway.
Fiction writers deserve to be paid but not academic writers?
Or is it that science should be free but culture should be gate locked?
It’s because the people making money off most academic papers are not the authors, rather the journal/conference they likely had to pay to publish in. Textbooks are a different story though.
Scientific writers should be paid, but most of them receive grants for specific research or do their research in their function as employed researchers/lecturers at some university. Their work is then posted on some scalping journals that are charging the author a listing fee, and then charge readers an access fee, which they pocket in its entirety. Scientific authors receive ZERO compensation for their work.
Source: Used to work in academia, published a few articles myself. Best case is that your work is considered "outstanding" and the journal graciously lists it for free instead of charging you for it.
As it stands, they don't get paid when you pay for reading it anyways. They themselves pay to publish it to a journal, the journal then sells it to you.
The scientists aren't paid by people reading their science, they are paid by grants, for doing the science in the first place.
I wholeheartedly support academic "piracy", it only hurts the gatekeepers.
…partly arguing that extradition was inappropriate because the US had never specified "which copyrighted works had allegedly been infringed."
Their detention occurred without compliance with legal norms and with numerous procedural violations, and the FBI request contained knowingly false data on the existence of a court sanction for arrest
Still the same old tactic
It's a hosting site for free ebooks.
The site admins don't provide any of the ebooks themselves - they just host files that are uploaded by whoever wishes, and provide for downloads for whoever wishes. (Not that that alters its legal status - just by way of explanation).
It's notably popular among college students, as a source to download free versions of obscenely overpriced textbooks.
Z-library was a massive pirate repository for ebooks.
It still is. The site is still up and running, they even upgraded their system to have Telegram Bots for its users.
It can be found here for anyone wondering: http://loginzlib2vrak5zzpcocc3ouizykn6k5qecgj2tzlnab5wcbqhembyd.onion/ and here: http://zlibrary24tuxziyiyfr7zd46ytefdqbqd2axkmxm4o5374ptpc52fad.onion/
I don't have a clearnet link since the mirror I've been using appears to have been seized, but the onion link should be the most reliable way to access the z-library.
We had a student run server for piracy at my University to get copied textbooks from, but even then we had to sometimes look elsewhere. I often couldn't afford books and not all professors allowed the cheaper used previous editions.
Science textbooks were the worst with their stupid fucking online code bullshit so we could do homework. They even made it where you could buy just the code, which was something like $70. Still better than 300+, but JFC. Having to spend over $1000 for books that you are only going to use for 10 weeks was nuts.
The last saving grace we had is all textbooks were required to have at least one copy in the library that could not be checked out/removed. You could photocopy the homework pages that way. If your classmates were nice, they would let you borrow theirs to copy any pages too. You could also buy your textbook, copy what you needed, and return it within the return window.
And usually, there was an awesome professor that would "accidentally" make a free e-version of the textbook available to the class. God I appreciated the hell outta them.
I had professors that instead of a text book had you buy a “reader” from a copy shop. It was just a big binder of photocopied pages from text books, academic journals and various published papers. I still hold on to a few of them as they were kinda like mix tapes of various ideas and info, way more interesting than a text book.
The local copy shops were bigger centers of piracy than Napster at the time.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
But according to a translated article from a local publication called La Voz, the pair suddenly disappeared after submitting a request "to be considered political refugees" in order to "avoid being sent to the US."
Ars was not immediately able to reach the DOJ or the Patronato del Liberado—the agency in Argentina that confirmed to La Voz that the couple had escaped—to verify the report.
Officials told La Voz that the Patronato del Liberado was charged with monitoring the Z-Library admins' house arrest and "were surprised to find that there was no trace of them" during a routine check-in last May.
In a Change.org petition, the Z-Library team wrote that both were "project participants who ensure the operation of the platform" and were "not involved in uploading files" the US considered copyright-infringing, calling their detention "unfair and unacceptable."
It currently has 146,000 out of 150,000 signatures sought, with Z-Library fans defending the platform as providing critical access for people without financial means to knowledge and diverse educational resources.
"We call for the restoration of Z-Library and for a fair solution that takes into account both the rights of authors and the need for people to have free access to educational resources," the petition said.
The original article contains 663 words, the summary contains 204 words. Saved 69%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
They will be extradited to face financial capital face-to-face, in the "Land of the free"
