7 ms·

Libgen is a civilizational project that should be endorsed, not prosecuted. I hope one day people will look at it and think how stupid we were today to shun the

by mik1998 2y ago

Libgen is a civilizational project that should be endorsed, not prosecuted. I hope one day people will look at it and think how stupid we were today to shun the largest collection of literary works in human history.

rafram 2y ago
I think you’re overstating its importance. The internet already makes it possible to order almost any book in existence and have it arrive at your doorstep within a week or so, or often on your ebook reader instantly. And your local library probably participates in an interlibrary loan system that lets you request any book held by any library in the country for free. LibGen gives you access to a much smaller body of works than either of those. It’s a little more convenient. But the big difference is that it doesn’t compensate the author at all. Just go to a real library.
- mik1998 2y ago
  No one sells scans of older books, which are often sparsely available in obscure (often private) libraries.
  - rafram 2y ago
    Sure, but I have a strong feeling that scans of out-of-print books only constitute a small portion of LibGen’s traffic. It’s like the idea that most BitTorrent users are just using it to share free software and Creative Commons media. (See the screenshots on every BitTorrent client’s website.) It would definitely be helpful if it were true, but everyone knows it’s just wishful thinking.
    - crazygringo 2y ago
      Why does the proportion matter? Academics are huge users of LibGen for academic books from the entire past century and beyond. It's infinitely more convenient to instantly get a PDF you can highlight, than wait weeks for some interlibrary loan from an institution three states away. Just because the majority of people might be downloading Harry Potter is irrelevant.
- Cyph0n 2y ago
  1. We are not talking about physical books. 2. DRM is built in to most purchased ebooks, which means you can’t consume the book on any device. “Illegal” tools exist to circumvent this. 3. Large ebook stores - like other digital stores - essentially lend you a copy of the book. So when they are forced to pull a book, they’ll pull your access too. Of course, now that the big players have consumed/archived the entire book dump, they can go ahead and kill it to prevent others from doing the same thing.
- oguz-ismail 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - rafram 2y ago
    I definitely do know what I think.
    - esafak 2y ago
      Do you think developing countries are just peppered with libraries, and their inhabitants order books from Amazon? Libgen originated in Russia, and its users are global. This is not a purely American issue.
      - rafram 2y ago
        I was responding to a comment arguing that LibGen is the largest collection of knowledge in human history, which I think is an overly romantic and totally incorrect take. It may be a very useful collection of knowledge to people in developing countries, but it simply is not larger than the collection of knowledge accessible via any first-world public library. Obviously not everyone has access to that, but again, that’s not what the comment I replied to was about, and not relevant to what I’m saying.
        satvikpendem 2y ago
        > but it simply is not larger than the collection of knowledge accessible via any first-world public library How do you know or can quantify this? At a first approximation, libraries are finite in space while the internet is (for the purposes of this discussion) infinite. I'd agree with you if you had said something like Wikipedia was bigger than libgen (and probably not even then, as Wikipedia is merely a summary of primary sources, which would be theoretically contained in libgen).
- intotheabyss 2y ago
  And what about the other billions of people on the planet that don't even have a library, let alone a doorstep to receive a first world delivery service.
- thfuran 2y ago
  There are a whole lot of books that are out of print, and if a book went out of print before ebooks were a thing, it probably doesn't have a legal digital edition either.
  - xtracto 2y ago
    This. Few people here would remember ebooksclub/gigapedia/smiley/library.nu [1] which predated LibGen by several years. But that online library had a lot of books that are not availble nowadays. There were lots of scanned books (djvu) that people uploaded. So much lost knowledge. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library.nu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library.nu
- ALittleLight 2y ago
  It is *much* more convenient. When a research path takes me to an article or book - I could buy or order or go to a physical library, that would take hours or days. I could also open it as a PDF in seconds. If you need to read a chapter from a book, or an article, or skim such checking to see if it's worthwhile, 20-30 times to figure something out, then libgen is the difference between finishing in a day or a month.
- greenavocado 2y ago
  > LibGen gives you access to a much smaller body of works than either of those. > Just go to a real library. The thrill of waiting a week for a book to arrive or navigating the labyrinthine interlibrary loan system is truly a privilege that many can afford. And who needs instant access to knowledge when you can have the pleasure of paying for shipping or commuting to a physical library? It's also fascinating that you mention compensating authors, as if the current publishing model is a paragon of fairness and equity. I'm sure the authors are just thrilled to receive their meager royalties while the rest of the industry reaps the benefits. LibGen, on the other hand, is a quaint little website that only offers access to a vast, sprawling library of texts, completely free of charge and accessible to anyone with an internet connection. I'm sure it's totally insignificant compared to the robust and equitable systems you mentioned. Your suggestion to "just go to a real library" is also a brilliant solution, assuming that everyone has the luxury of living near a well-stocked library, having the time and resources to visit it, and not having any other obligations or responsibilities. I'm sure it's not at all a tone-deaf, out-of-touch recommendation.
  - JambalayaJimbo 2y ago
    Your library almost definitely offers digital loans as well.
    - crtasm 2y ago
      Seeing the high prices they are charged for a digital licence which expires after a fairly small number of loans, I feel it'd be better for my library if I pirate when possible. Save those limited loans for someone who prefers/needs them.
  - rafram 2y ago
    Yes, publishers don’t pay authors as much as they deserve, but LibGen pays them literally nothing. Authors tend to love libraries but hate piracy. Why? Because earning something is better than earning nothing. Have you ever submitted an ILL request? It’s extremely simple. Many library systems even integrate with WorldCat, so submitting a request for any book just takes a few clicks. I’m mostly speaking about people in the US. Every single county in the entire country has a public library. Almost all of them have ILL. I think equity is a fair argument for the existence of services like LibGen in many parts of the world, but the reality is that almost everyone using a book piracy sites in a first-world country is using it to pirate an in-print book that they just don’t want to go to the trouble of borrowing or buying.
- sva_ 2y ago
  Libraries can burn down (see Library of Alexandria), civilizations end (see various). LibGen makes it possible for an individual to backup a snapshot of cumulative human knowledge, and I think that's commendable.
luqtas 2y ago
Libgen turns into a problem when you have a company developing generative AI with it, either giving money to GPU manufacturers or themselves with paid services (see OpenAI)
- bbor 2y ago
  …why? Will people buy less books because we have intuitive algorithms trained on old books? Personally, I strongly believe that the aesthetic skills of humanity are one of our most advanced faculties — we are nowhere close to replacing them with fully-automated output, AGI or no.
  - luqtas 2y ago
    old books? i can imagine the shit/hallucinated-like generative AI we would have if the training weight was restricted to public domain stuff... i think when chatGPT was around version 2 or 3, i had extracted almost 2 pages (without any alteration from the original) with questions that considered the author from this book here, https://www.amazon.com/Loneliness-Human-Nature-Social-Connection/dp/0393335283 https://www.amazon.com/Loneliness-Human-Nature-Social-Connec... now it's up to you to think this is okay... but i bet you are no author
    - Workaccount2 2y ago
      The answer is to censor the model output, not the training input. A dumb filter using 20 year old technology can easily stop LLM's from verbatim copyright output.
      - esafak 2y ago
        What if the model simply substitutes synonyms here and there without changing the spirit of the material? (This might not work for poetry, obviously.) It is not such a simple matter.
        Workaccount2 2y ago
greeniskool 2y ago
Anna's Archive encourages (and monetizes!!) the use of their shadow library for LLM training. They have a page dedicated to it on their site. You pay them, and they give you high download speeds to entire datasets.
adamsb6 2y ago
I wonder how much more libgen traffic can be attributed to the lawsuit. When Metallica sued Napster, for many people the reaction was, "wait I can download music for free?"

rafram 2y ago

I think you’re overstating its importance. The internet already makes it possible to order almost any book in existence and have it arrive at your doorstep within a week or so, or often on your ebook reader instantly. And your local library probably participates in an interlibrary loan system that lets you request any book held by any library in the country for free. LibGen gives you access to a much smaller body of works than either of those. It’s a little more convenient. But the big difference is that it doesn’t compensate the author at all. Just go to a real library.

mik1998 2y ago
No one sells scans of older books, which are often sparsely available in obscure (often private) libraries.
- rafram 2y ago
  Sure, but I have a strong feeling that scans of out-of-print books only constitute a small portion of LibGen’s traffic. It’s like the idea that most BitTorrent users are just using it to share free software and Creative Commons media. (See the screenshots on every BitTorrent client’s website.) It would definitely be helpful if it were true, but everyone knows it’s just wishful thinking.
  - crazygringo 2y ago
    Why does the proportion matter? Academics are huge users of LibGen for academic books from the entire past century and beyond. It's infinitely more convenient to instantly get a PDF you can highlight, than wait weeks for some interlibrary loan from an institution three states away. Just because the majority of people might be downloading Harry Potter is irrelevant.
Cyph0n 2y ago
1. We are not talking about physical books. 2. DRM is built in to most purchased ebooks, which means you can’t consume the book on any device. “Illegal” tools exist to circumvent this. 3. Large ebook stores - like other digital stores - essentially lend you a copy of the book. So when they are forced to pull a book, they’ll pull your access too. Of course, now that the big players have consumed/archived the entire book dump, they can go ahead and kill it to prevent others from doing the same thing.
oguz-ismail 2y ago
[flagged]
- rafram 2y ago
  I definitely do know what I think.
  - esafak 2y ago
    Do you think developing countries are just peppered with libraries, and their inhabitants order books from Amazon? Libgen originated in Russia, and its users are global. This is not a purely American issue.
    - rafram 2y ago
      I was responding to a comment arguing that LibGen is the largest collection of knowledge in human history, which I think is an overly romantic and totally incorrect take. It may be a very useful collection of knowledge to people in developing countries, but it simply is not larger than the collection of knowledge accessible via any first-world public library. Obviously not everyone has access to that, but again, that’s not what the comment I replied to was about, and not relevant to what I’m saying.
      - satvikpendem 2y ago
        > but it simply is not larger than the collection of knowledge accessible via any first-world public library How do you know or can quantify this? At a first approximation, libraries are finite in space while the internet is (for the purposes of this discussion) infinite. I'd agree with you if you had said something like Wikipedia was bigger than libgen (and probably not even then, as Wikipedia is merely a summary of primary sources, which would be theoretically contained in libgen).
intotheabyss 2y ago
And what about the other billions of people on the planet that don't even have a library, let alone a doorstep to receive a first world delivery service.
thfuran 2y ago
There are a whole lot of books that are out of print, and if a book went out of print before ebooks were a thing, it probably doesn't have a legal digital edition either.
- xtracto 2y ago
  This. Few people here would remember ebooksclub/gigapedia/smiley/library.nu [1] which predated LibGen by several years. But that online library had a lot of books that are not availble nowadays. There were lots of scanned books (djvu) that people uploaded. So much lost knowledge. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library.nu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library.nu
ALittleLight 2y ago
It is *much* more convenient. When a research path takes me to an article or book - I could buy or order or go to a physical library, that would take hours or days. I could also open it as a PDF in seconds. If you need to read a chapter from a book, or an article, or skim such checking to see if it's worthwhile, 20-30 times to figure something out, then libgen is the difference between finishing in a day or a month.
greenavocado 2y ago
> LibGen gives you access to a much smaller body of works than either of those. > Just go to a real library. The thrill of waiting a week for a book to arrive or navigating the labyrinthine interlibrary loan system is truly a privilege that many can afford. And who needs instant access to knowledge when you can have the pleasure of paying for shipping or commuting to a physical library? It's also fascinating that you mention compensating authors, as if the current publishing model is a paragon of fairness and equity. I'm sure the authors are just thrilled to receive their meager royalties while the rest of the industry reaps the benefits. LibGen, on the other hand, is a quaint little website that only offers access to a vast, sprawling library of texts, completely free of charge and accessible to anyone with an internet connection. I'm sure it's totally insignificant compared to the robust and equitable systems you mentioned. Your suggestion to "just go to a real library" is also a brilliant solution, assuming that everyone has the luxury of living near a well-stocked library, having the time and resources to visit it, and not having any other obligations or responsibilities. I'm sure it's not at all a tone-deaf, out-of-touch recommendation.
- JambalayaJimbo 2y ago
  Your library almost definitely offers digital loans as well.
  - crtasm 2y ago
    Seeing the high prices they are charged for a digital licence which expires after a fairly small number of loans, I feel it'd be better for my library if I pirate when possible. Save those limited loans for someone who prefers/needs them.
- rafram 2y ago
  Yes, publishers don’t pay authors as much as they deserve, but LibGen pays them literally nothing. Authors tend to love libraries but hate piracy. Why? Because earning something is better than earning nothing. Have you ever submitted an ILL request? It’s extremely simple. Many library systems even integrate with WorldCat, so submitting a request for any book just takes a few clicks. I’m mostly speaking about people in the US. Every single county in the entire country has a public library. Almost all of them have ILL. I think equity is a fair argument for the existence of services like LibGen in many parts of the world, but the reality is that almost everyone using a book piracy sites in a first-world country is using it to pirate an in-print book that they just don’t want to go to the trouble of borrowing or buying.
sva_ 2y ago
Libraries can burn down (see Library of Alexandria), civilizations end (see various). LibGen makes it possible for an individual to backup a snapshot of cumulative human knowledge, and I think that's commendable.

luqtas 2y ago

Libgen turns into a problem when you have a company developing generative AI with it, either giving money to GPU manufacturers or themselves with paid services (see OpenAI)

bbor 2y ago
…why? Will people buy less books because we have intuitive algorithms trained on old books? Personally, I strongly believe that the aesthetic skills of humanity are one of our most advanced faculties — we are nowhere close to replacing them with fully-automated output, AGI or no.
- luqtas 2y ago
  old books? i can imagine the shit/hallucinated-like generative AI we would have if the training weight was restricted to public domain stuff... i think when chatGPT was around version 2 or 3, i had extracted almost 2 pages (without any alteration from the original) with questions that considered the author from this book here, https://www.amazon.com/Loneliness-Human-Nature-Social-Connection/dp/0393335283 https://www.amazon.com/Loneliness-Human-Nature-Social-Connec... now it's up to you to think this is okay... but i bet you are no author
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
    The answer is to censor the model output, not the training input. A dumb filter using 20 year old technology can easily stop LLM's from verbatim copyright output.
    - esafak 2y ago
      What if the model simply substitutes synonyms here and there without changing the spirit of the material? (This might not work for poetry, obviously.) It is not such a simple matter.
      - Workaccount2 2y ago

greeniskool 2y ago

Anna's Archive encourages (and monetizes!!) the use of their shadow library for LLM training. They have a page dedicated to it on their site. You pay them, and they give you high download speeds to entire datasets.

adamsb6 2y ago

I wonder how much more libgen traffic can be attributed to the lawsuit. When Metallica sued Napster, for many people the reaction was, "wait I can download music for free?"