A search engine for searching books in the Z-Library index on the IPFS network

Re:A search engine for searching books in the Z-Library inde... by yucky on Thursday December 29, 2022 @06:45PM (#34179678)

   > By the way, the answer to your questions is yes.

You say it's theft to take pictures of the pages of a library book? I would need you to cite your sources please.

If it matters, I recently ordered 6 hardcovers from an author who's book that I downloaded from libgen was so impressively written, well sourced and thought provoking that I just had to put his best works (the book I "stole" by downloading, and 5 of his other works) in my physical library.

On the flipside, I recently wanted to read a book (different author) so badly but it wasn't available anywhere for less than $100 since it's out of print, so I downloaded it and don't feel bad at all. I haven't read that one yet, and if I love it I might spend the money for a physical copy, but it wouldn't matter since it's out of print and used and wouldn't make a difference to the author (also, he's dead).

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Re:A search engine for searching books in the Z-Library inde... by jll29 on Thursday December 29, 2022 @07:03PM (#34179847)

Germany has a system where the books purchased by libraries and also printers and scanners contain a fee that contributes to a fund for reimbursing copyright holders (Verwertungsgesellschaft Wort, cf. https://www.vgwort.de/startseite.html ). Very fast copiers/scanners are more expensive - inter alia - for that reason, according to a colleague of mine (I'm not an expert in this).

So you copying one page from a book in a library would still lead to some form of compensation, although one could debate whether it is fair or not, whereas using a P2P search engine to locate an online copy of a PDF would not.

Also, IMHO, the discussion of such online libraries should separate the topic of fair compensation of authors (I believe Norway or Finnland have "author stipends" paid by the government that one can apply) and the topic of locating and researching whether a book is what one needs or to one's liking.

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Re:A search engine for searching books in the Z-Library inde... by yucky on Thursday December 29, 2022 @09:37PM (#34181125)

I would imagine authors get compensation from their books purchased by US libraries too. But it's not going to scale with how many times a book is checked out, or even prevent it from being copied after checkout.

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