You can buy invites to private trackers too. It's complicated.

The difference is you've never heard of the private trackers.

One thing's for sure: Congress has completely abrogated its role in resolving these matters to everyone's liking.

> I have no sympathy

Like piracy exists, massive piracy, de jure, that's the status quo, it would be extremely reductionist and flawed to be like, "Well piracy is illegal." Like every person you like has probably pirated something, something expensive. I bet one of your favorite professors or TAs has probably copied a book for people: they're facilitating piracy. Something something log in your eye.

I'm not saying you're wrong or right or whatever. I'm saying every meaningful IP related question nowadays requires years of courtroom litigation to Just Get a Fucking Answer. It's chaos.

In my anarchist circles, other things are recommended before z-lib, which is a second-to-last resort.

There's an ebook piracy scheme that's been going on longer than z-lib, but it's a little bit more complicated to use than just a website, so it kinda flies under the radar.

> anarchist circles

Okay well, demanding ethical piracy from everyone except for the piracy that you use is pretty NIMBY of you.

And anyway, I'm not sure why you're being downvoted! This humorless website...

It's a bummer for humanity, but the people running z-lib should have known what they were getting into by charging for a fast lane.

My tracker gives you points based on site and IRC activity which you can use to buy invites and ratio.

Donation gives your username a different colour in the shoutbox. I think you can pick colour if you donate enough.

In my experience downloading books from IRC isn’t as annoying as getting them from zlibrary etc but the selection isn’t as good.

Pray tell.

slsk is also an old thing that sometimes surprises, though it's not the best for books

much newer is telegram bots for all sorts of things, from sci-hub replacement to general ebooks

I wish congress would do what they are supposed to do. The constitution clearly states that Congress can blablah (copyright) WITH THE PURPOSE OF ADVANCING science and useful arts. That's the only purpose of copyright.

Now, for books, compare what you can get on zlibrary, with what you can buy at amazon. Never mind comparing it to a local bookstore. It becomes obvious quickly that the superior move for advancing the arts (not just availability) is to let them exist.

This is the problem: copyright kills availability. After 2-3 weeks (months for some books, and the only books lasting years are textbooks, which also ought to be free, for different reasons) books aren't economical to print anymore. This means that after 6 months or so new works disappear into a black hole because for-profit firms don't distribute them anymore, and copyright means nobody else is doing it either (certainly libraries don't hold on to them. I mean you can get lucky, but ...)

Same thing goes for movies. Theater release. TV release. Netflix release. Say this takes a year (these days). After that, good luck getting hold of a movie.

Now can anyone tell me how creating a 6-month event horizon for all books, after which they disappear into a black hole forever, advances science and useful arts ...

They can even keep Disney in power for all I care. How about you have to prove 1000 sales in a year to retain copyright?

It can also be (easily) argued that Z-Library is a definitive net-benefit to the humanity as a whole.

Taking money in exchange for priority access to the "stolen" materials makes things feel less like charity, though.

Do you even read 10 books per day anyway?

Why doesn’t this statement also apply to the source of the materials this entity is stealing from?

Currently, there is no viable way to access all that information without databases like the Z-Library or scihub/libgen. All those library subscriptions are just a legalised form of extortion, which are usually inaccessible if you aren't affiliated with a university (or not with the right one)

"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."

--Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights", Datalinks

It's copyrighted content, why would they be allowed to sustain themselves illegally reselling it?

It's very simple.

Libgen isn't facing the same issues because it isn't a commercial enterprise.

University publishers have consolidated in an anti-trust manner to virtual monopolies, and so charge zillions for books that should be $20 instead of $200. Universities have become massive cash-extraction businesses swimming in coin, spending 10-100M's USD each on buildings in short order, while trying to keep up the pretense of academic purity.

And then there are the journals that are so expensive that high school and college students and people in developing countries who cannot afford to get past their paywalls. This reinforces both an economic and a scientific elitism.

University researchers/teachers who publish books or articles through them often get paid nothing (zero), or very little. And they do not care, since their goal is get publications in prestigious venues, which helps them in their academic career.

My point is that this stuff should be free, open access, published at low cost through university presses etc. So pirating academic books is basically fine.

That should be up to the author, no? If they decide to not make it open source and take a tiny profit, that's their decision since it's their work.