this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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Another one is close to biting the dust. Sci-Hub is out, Z-Lib got ran off like a dog and now IA is going to remove a host of books because these publishers just can't stop being money-hungry bastards.

This is why I support piracy. Knowledge should be free. To go after a nonprofit organization that just wants to make digital books and other formats accessible to everyone when majority of uploads can't be downloaded only borrowed, is just so devious and greedy.

I'm so tired of it. Laws around copyright and intellectual property need to be reformed. I feel so helpless :c

Link to blog post:

https://blog.archive.org/2023/08/17/what-the-hachette-v-internet-archive-decision-means-for-our-library/

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[–] [email protected] 65 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Sci Hub is not down or did I miss something?

[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 year ago

No longer taking new papers for a couple of years? now. Crying shame and a pox on scientific advancement.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago

Zlib still works as well

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

Looks fine from here.

[–] [email protected] 62 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is depressing as hell.

Most people have no idea how much sci-hub has advanced medical and basic scientific discovery.

We need things like the archive more than ever now too as the the disease of thinking truth is a maleable substrate continues to spread.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago

I can't believe these are the times we live in. The services of the Internet Archive are invaluable for scholars and students alike. No library can afford all the printed books/journals or licenses needed for an adequate approach to most topics. And to be honest, shadow libraries are also much needed when publishers lock away vital knowledge (which was often gained through support from public grants).

This seems just another example of how capitalism will bring about the downfall of our civilization as it hinders the progress of science.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Anna's archive acts as a drop in replacement for libgen and z-library, also doesn't cost anything

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

doesn't it rely on them ? more of an indexer...

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No, more like a mirror in that it hosts all of zlib and libgen's content as well as providing torrent and ipfs links for the files (which they seed)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And yet when libgen was broken a couple of days ago it sent me to the broken libgen for the (admittedly obscure) thing I was after. Perhaps caching I dunno. Still, glad it's there...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

From what I see, there are ~~4~~ 5 options on annas-archive.org

  1. Use fast(but fee charging) direct download

  2. Use ipfs

  3. use torrents

  4. Go to source pages (libgen and/or zlibrary)

  5. Slow direct download [Edited]

It sounds like you clicked the link to the source as opposed to the mirrors

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nah, in this case there was only 4. I've seen the others before.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Huh, it seems it depends on the existing sources, I'm not particularly sure how that works

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I still can access zlib what are you talking about??

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I didn't say it was dead, most of its domains were seized by the US, so they were in fact run off like dogs. I made a post a month or two back mentioning the new domain they have.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It seems like this order is rather limited and the IA can continue almost all of their work.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I hope this is where it stops. Current laws aren't too favourable towards projects like these and the IA depends heavily on donations so I don't think they'd be able to withstand multiple drawn out court battles. I'm just waiting to see what gets affected exactly and to what extent.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Uh zlib and sci hub are both still alive.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Sci-Hub stopped adding new articles since its court case and Z-Lib had most of its domains seized by the US. I didn't say they were dead, but tried to convey that they were attacked and forced to either cease their operations or shrink significantly.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Right but zlib is full strength at this point, and libgen remained unaffected. Annas archive gives an extensive coverage of it all.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can you chuck me a link, can’t find the post.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Not like theres a certain onion to connect to it...

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

They've forced me into the high seas with their destructive greed.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Internet Archiv will go .onion

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (3 children)

That only helps for shadow libraries whose operators are unknown. The Internet Archive, on the other hand, is a registered non-profit organisation, so how would they be able to hide themselves?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just like the OG Pirate Bay. They closed down, and someone else, unknown, took over.

That's not unproblematic ofc as the new owner can do whatever they want without the oversight of the non-profit.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It'd be harder for IA since they have hundreds of PBs of hard drives. You need like a warehouse for it so it's a lot harder to hop around

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They could give the entire data as download and others could take over

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

It's not so simple, unfortunately. The sheer amount of data they have - 212 PB as of December 2021 - makes it practically impossible for most people to mirror. Unless they physically hand over all 745 server nodes to another operator, there's no way of someone

There are some solutions to this - for example Archive-Team has proposed a method of mirroring the Internet Archive using distributed clients, although this method currently only has a fraction of the total dataset. Still, at this point in time, there's no real solution to resharing IA's data in the event they go under

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

how would they be able to hide themselves?

It's literally in the name for a .onion website: hidden service

Tor hides the identity of servers just as much as it does for client users. So as long as the IA hosts in a country where publishers don't have jurisdiction, I believe they'll be fine

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

Customs and emigration will notice the hundreds of server racks on a boat

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’ll be hard to do when the bailiffs have seized their building and all their servers

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Federate it!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

I was of the impression that the ia doesn't delete, but instead puts files in quarantine until copyright runs out. Else they'd have to digitize it again later.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Honestly, for Sci-hub I think it's just that Elbakyan got tired of maintaining and updating it constantly. That "waiting for court results" part was just an excuse, just because Indian law enforcement is too unequipped to go after pirates doesn't mean the country magically became lax on IP law. There was no good chance she could've won the dismissal plea.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And it was IA's increased activity during the pandemic that spurred the current trouble. Brewster Kahle is a saint.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That's what I read as well. You would think they would've gotten some leeway since it was done during an event comparable to war and they were following the footsteps of other digital libraries. They had a pretty stellar reputation and system in place for nearly a decade already, so I can only assume that they were simply waiting for an opportunity to target them.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

was getting really confused for a second there.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Lmao I'm so sorry! I realised afterwards what was happening, but have no idea how to fix it since I'm still fairly new to Lemmy. I hope it didn't inconvenience you too much!