Not to be forgotten, of course, is the fact that this search tool *also* lets us see how much of our work is in this particular pirate cove of the Internet. So that’s fun, too.
Comments
Log in with your Bluesky account to leave a comment
(And again recently, tho not to much avail lmao “On September 26, 2024, a US judge ordered LibGen to pay the publishers US$30 million, but no one knows who runs it. In December 2024, the publishers succeeded in seizing the "library.lol"”)
If you’re reading this and work for Elsevier: 👈🤣🤣🤭✌️🖕
If you start you will end up with a wack em all of a dozen people mirroring this corpus and uploading it again, in fact that is what libgen was originally, part of a pirate library mirroring project and in the end there is a tor site or someone in a country which dosent care about copyright.
There will always be these pirate libraries since https://archive.org is bound by law and people dont like the idea of us loosing such a giant corpus of media due to copyright.
the difference here is that the AI collection isn't available to you. They aren't sharing this stuff with anyone other than the AI learning model. One of my papers is in there because Cambridge University Press let them have it.
You nailed it. These shadow libraries are, well, libraries, legit stuff. It also helped me to finish me PhD, giving me access to seemingly obscure literature from across the 🌍, and I gave a nod to this infrastructure in my defence.
I can’t bring myself to fully endorse sites that don’t acquire some kind of permission, but at least with articles and textbooks, I get it. Students need access. Students often can’t afford the crazy cost of books. It feels like textbook publishers are taking advantage of the need.
when i was a kid my public library's science section was two shelves. the only computer science book was from the 90s. what was i supposed to do in that situation?
Sounds like the actual issue here is getting more funding for libraries so they can have access to more books so people don't need to resort to exploiting writers :)
Did you talk to a librarian? I lived in po-dunk rural Nevada, and we had interlibrary loan that allowed us to access anything in the Northern Nevada library system.
Nowadays it's even better, as that interlibrary loan system also applies to ebooks, so you don't even have to wait for it to arrive.
I’ve given permission to public libraries by allowing Hoopla access. My permission. And the libraries themselves buy the books. I don’t recall a check from Libgen, and access through libraries -even online- comes with limits.
And while we’re on that thought, what are your thoughts about writing a book, spending your own money to self publish that book then putting it out in the marketplace —at a loss— to have people take it for free, feed it to AI to learn from it so techbros can profit from their AI writing software?
Not sure what the point here is? Libraries that pay for books and licenses and can only loan one hard copy at a time and charge fees for books not timely returned? And which pay for and often have to renew licenses for ebooks and audio books that are several times the cost of hard copies?
This "pirate cove" isn't a pirate cove, it's an open library resource. You are literally destroying the wrong target here. You should be going after Meta for stealing your shit for AI garbage, not an open library who has preserved countless books over the years.
I will say it again: The only people who benefit from destroying sites like this are publishers and corpos.
But go ahead, destroy another archive because of misinfo. I'm sure your books will last forever on centralized storefronts that are known for random, sudden delistings of people's works. :V
First of all, who says I’m not wanting to hold Meta accountable. Second, would Meta have had access if it wasn’t available through LibGen? Third, why should I have different standards for different entities who share/use my copyrighted work without —any— permission from/compensation to me? 1/
Why is LibGen’s violation of fair use any different from Meta?
Why is it expected that artists and writers (and I’m self published btw, which means bearing all the costs) should give away their work for free at any level? You may think that free access libraries is sticking it to corps but 2/
Nothing was stolen here. The book is still there. The author still has it to sell. This downloader was not going to purchase it regardless; the author’s profit went from 0 to 0. The idea of intellectual property theft is a myth spun up by media conglomerates.
It sucks ass that making a living as an author under capitalism is so difficult. Sites like libgen have literally nothing to do with that fact. Your moral outrage is misplaced and doesn’t benefit this author at all, it just benefits Disney.
What if college students paid writers the same amount text book publishers would, then we all got together and burned the industry of for profit education to the ground?
Istg eventually as a society we’ll get to the point where people stop equating reading a book without permission with stealing an object and thereby depriving its owner of its use.
my god, they're taking the hundreds of dollars each textbook costs right out of the mouths of the publishing company-- i mean, the. author. that's who gets that money.
Let's talk about it. Because all the fiction authors I know have had their work pirated by LibGen. They aren't needed for a college education. And none of those books cost $500 or whatever academia is charging now.
Pirating is still illegal and LibGen is still wrong. Justify it all you want, but I did not consent to have my work pirated. Libraries are not the same. They actually pay authors.
Your incidental use of libgen during college as an individual and Meta's use of libgen in its role as multibillion dollar company are scenarios that are vastly different from one another.
Comments
If you’re reading this and work for Elsevier: 👈🤣🤣🤭✌️🖕
https://libgen.mx/
Note also Cory's take on #AI and IP https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/09/ai-monkeys-paw/
Nowadays it's even better, as that interlibrary loan system also applies to ebooks, so you don't even have to wait for it to arrive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Lending_Right
But go ahead, destroy another archive because of misinfo. I'm sure your books will last forever on centralized storefronts that are known for random, sudden delistings of people's works. :V
Why is it expected that artists and writers (and I’m self published btw, which means bearing all the costs) should give away their work for free at any level? You may think that free access libraries is sticking it to corps but 2/
(That's a bit of an exaggeration, most of my work isn't in there yet. But unless you're a superduper bestselling author, every penny counts.)
Not today, but someday!
(Answer key: No, Hell no)
Why should I work for you for free?
And yes, this is why fighting for freedom of information is good. Stealing a book by looking at it is not like stealing a car 🙂