Comment by doctorpangloss | Hacker News Reader

Comment by doctorpangloss | Hacker News Reader

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> If they didn't have a premium membership this would be much different.

You can buy invites to private trackers too. You can buy ratio - the ability to download more. It's complicated.

The difference is you've never heard of the private trackers. (Edit: it turns out the poster is in 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.

I'm on some private trackers. When they get shut down, I won't be surprised.

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.

> I'm on some private trackers [which do basically the exact same thing that Z-Library does, with more steps]

> 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...

I'm not demanding ethical privacy, I just understand why they were shut down.

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.

Buying ratio is the same as charging for a fast lane.

And selling ratio opens a private tracker to legal issues far beyond where they would be if they didn't.

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.

This isn't a counter argument

> 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.

Pray tell.

The first rule of fight club...

there's #bookz, that's pretty well known

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

> 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.

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

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

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?

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