Always saddens me when people who take the >2000 year old concept of a library into the digital age have to do so in the shadows, oftentimes under threat of persecution.<p>Why can't everybody legally share and spread knowledge as they please?<p>Google Books was 90% there, I wish it would have been allowed to succeed.
Main site: <a href="http://pilimi.org/" rel="nofollow">http://pilimi.org/</a><p>Torrents can be obtained via their onion site: <a href="http://2urmf2mk2dhmz4km522u4yfy2ynbzkbejf2cvmpcbzhpffvcuksrz6ad.onion/zlib-downloads.html" rel="nofollow">http://2urmf2mk2dhmz4km522u4yfy2ynbzkbejf2cvmpcbzhpffvcuksrz...</a> (requires Tor to follow link)<p>Using onion.ws proxy: <a href="http://2urmf2mk2dhmz4km522u4yfy2ynbzkbejf2cvmpcbzhpffvcuksrz6ad.onion.ws/zlib-downloads.html" rel="nofollow">http://2urmf2mk2dhmz4km522u4yfy2ynbzkbejf2cvmpcbzhpffvcuksrz...</a> (doesn't require Tor)
There are ways we as a society could endorse these kinds of libraries while also keeping authors incentivized.<p>Here’s how I see it: <a href="https://blog.danieljanus.pl/2022/09/24/paying-for-books/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.danieljanus.pl/2022/09/24/paying-for-books/</a>
I understand that books needs to be financed but why should we deprive the poorest from accessing culture knowing that marginal cost of ebooks is zero.<p>We should incentivize reading books not making it harder or more expensive.<p>- E-books should be free and of easy access.<p>- Writers and editors should be paid according to the popularity of their work.<p>The proposals are not incompatible.
the technical book writing no longer makes financial sense to me these days, unless you wrote them to become well known domain expert and possibly get more leads for future profit, and you don't care about how much you can make directly from the books sale.<p>I think a viable approach is:<p><pre><code> 1. publish your book in e-format, it will be pirated but only those who paid will get continuous update such as new contents added, errata fixes etc easily and regularly.
2. offer a print-on-demand service for those who prefers to have a printed version.
3. offer a pay-me-later link to those who read it without pay(e.g. pirated version), later realize your writing indeed helped them so much to the point they want to "tip" you for a sense of rightness.</code></pre>
Interestingly enough, there are a lot of books on archive.org that are not on LibGen, usually high quality scans. That's another source that should be mirrored, given the legal trouble surrounding archive.
It boggles my mind that people can only mention that this resource is illegal without pointing out it's the best library humanity has ever made.<p>It has been the goal of the Google cofounders, Carnegie, and great civilizations since antiquity to make something like this.<p>Are people's thoughts really so moulded by their surroundings, that they cannot recognize a wonder in front of them?
For the lazy, this is a blog article. As they say themselves: “ We only host our own words here. No torrents or other copyrighted files are hosted or linked here. If you want to access the Pirate Library Mirror, you'll have to find it yourself”.
Mixed feelings about this. I want to have access to millions of books and I also support archiving information this way. 20 years ago I would be drooling over this. But now, I think about those writers who spent countless hours creating their masterpieces and their stolen work.
A slightly off-topic but still relevant - the app Libby is currently as close to that ideal library of everything for free. You have access to vast amount of books, especially most of the recently published ones (and some popular older ones that have digital versions published) and available for free, at your fingertip. Since I have started reading books through Libby, I read a lot more books, and started collecting more library cards :) Surprisingly few people seem to know about Libby. If you haven't installed one, you really should. And I am surprised there's no mention of Libby in HN when the topic is about books and its availability.
How is this any different than buying a second hand book (which I assume no one has a problem with)? The author doesn’t see a single dime from a second hand purchase.
Without a lot of difficulty I was able to find the actual mirror site[0] but it consists only of a long list of torrent files with uniform names. How would one find a given book in all that? Well, per the FAQ, "You can search the SQL file in the first torrent after loading it into a MySQL database. Keep in mind that our goal here is not to make it easy to access the data, but to make the long-term preservation easy."<p>[0] oh no, that would spoil the fun
So on the subject of library science, I think a really valuable use for machine learning would be the automatic derivation of classifications in systems like UDC [0]. That would open the door to easier traversal of this absolutely massive dataset.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Decimal_Classification" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Decimal_Classificati...</a>
Why dont we pay just 1 $ or less for every published books. 1$ * 1 mio reader. that 1 million $. make the payment channel as easiest as possible. all in the digital format.<p>if readers wanted the printed version, they just go to nearby printing services.<p>share the income between readers, authors, and publishers.<p>rather than listed hundreds dollar pricing in amazon. but author just get 10 or 100 buyer. After that the books also ended in the "pirate worlds".
Patens need a exponential tax, so its only worth to cling to those worthy. First year is free, 2nd year is 1000 $, third year 1000 ^ 2$, etc.<p>Research Endavours that do not bring in the money have to be funded and spearheaded by government programs (as they often are already).
The same way many empires fell to obsoletion were their inability or lack of foresight to adapt from Blockbuster to Borders to Toys R Us. Music streaming and Cable TV too.<p>Authors should shift to paid newsletters and drip content over time. Imagine a book with 250 pages would keep your subscription going for a year or two while you work on the next. And once you're about ready to launch the next book, you can compile the "old" content to physical book for a flash sale. Ofc lack of distribution channel and exposure might hurt sales. OTOH, you'd likely see more profit than publishing it whole unless there's a marketing / branding / political advantage.
<i>We're not doing this for money, but we would love to quit our jobs in finance and tech, and work on this full time.</i><p>Are they actually being paid for work in finance and tech? Can that be open sourced? In the name of ethical purity, will they only be accepting funds from work that is arranging physical objects like laying bricks, plumbing, carpentry, etc.?
While this effort is hugely appreciated someone needs to make an open source alternative to Zlibrary where books can be freely searched without rate limitation. Right now I don't know how to even download and sort through 31TB of this data.
Why does Hacker News like to support some industries, like Electric Cars, and Rust, and Nuclear Fusion, and wants to destroy others like the ability for people to make money writing books?