What we need is a library that focuses only on out of print out difficult to get books. We don't need Harry Potter and likes on it. There are a million legal/illegal ways to get them.
They should just make it easier for people to scan books. Or give incentives. Why mail physical books around when all you need is their content?<p>Or just get people to upload photos from the backs of the books in their library. Then extract from those the titles. Match them up against books that are missing in the digital library and are being requested by users.<p>Then send a message to the owner and ask them to scan this particular book.<p>Give an incentive based on both the number of requests and the speed of uploading the scan.<p>Could even allow requesters to set their own rewards. “I’d be willing to pay X to get this book scanned before Tuesday”.
London has a number of red telephone kiosks turned into libraries. I belive they are administered by local groups which move the stock around once in a while but I would suspect it's difficult to manage this online since there is no check-in/check-out process.
<i>Z-Library envisions a book 'sharing' market, where its millions of users can pick up paperbacks at dedicated "Z-Points" around the globe.</i><p>Has this ever worked out? By "this" I mean some online entity that's only or mostly involved in less than legal activities saying they're going to launch some massive real-world project? I feel like it's less a way to accomplish something in the real world or even to generate press attention, but actually just self-fueling hype. The non-legal project is manned by mostly unpaid activists, who are motivated by a shared philosophy, which must be driven by willpower. That will to continue on is bolstered by hype, and these announcements are a way to self-generate hype.
> According to Z-Library, users will be able to send books by mail. These can then be loaned by others and/or sent by mail when requested.<p>Like the old e-tree where they would send someone a CD, they’d make a copy and send it on to the next person.<p>Never actually used it because by the time I got into the jam bands I already had good enough internets to just download stuff but it was still operational circa 1999 — guessing for folks without broadband.
I wonder if the benefits of having physical copies of books will outweigh the expense, difficulty, and risk/exposure of running a miniature version of Amazons logistics network.
Some thoughts...<p>On the connected question of why human societies accelerated their development over time (recently posted on HN) a couple of comments are pertinent (see [0] and [1]).<p>If one values the continued acceleration of human development (in all its expanding pluralities) then there is a strong case for something like Z-lib to exist for a lot of factual or science-generated information being available for everyone. For such texts, I would guess that what the library contains could lag behind the commercial publication front by 5-10 years without appreciable profit loss to the publishing companies, nor significant losses to the estates of individuals who created them. And taking away some of their back catalogue might actually reduce publishers' running costs... (Ask: Can anyone else on HN put hard numbers to this?)<p>The debate seems similar to the one regarding taxation vs. inflation rate rises. Governments are currently choosing to raise inflation rates because that doesn't impede trade flows as much as some potential friction coming from moving money through a government bureaucracy for some cause. The particular cause matters, but the choice is about efficiency in essence. The same with Z-lib, as I see it. A Z-lib type free digital library could raise global efficiency in all sorts of areas, but the argument will only pass if various forms of extortive-because-looking-very-obsolete-now old capitalist inefficiences can be demonstrated to be such. Lots of publishing companies are probably holding on to old titles that for them are already digital landfill in their archives. Maybe they just need to see that clearly.<p>The other catch is that the "for everyone" phrase implies a representative global stakeholder is needed for it to "get legal". UN.org/z-lib anyone?<p>[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35493797" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35493797</a>
[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35495511" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35495511</a>
The copyright police will fall on this like a ton of bricks. Publishers already hate libraries (yes they do), the last thing they want is more of them.