There’s many laws not worth their enforcement costs.
These seizures are some of the only legal actions which are just emblematic of pure corruption. The government serving the interests of middlemen whose primary impact on science is making it less accessible and charging rents on it. It’s a hellish parody of copyright law.
If I worked for Elsevier I’d feel worse about what I did for a living than if I worked for Marlboro.
Because law enforcement has always existed to serve and protect corporate interests. I'm old and not trying to be edgy. It's just so. The things they do that seem like protecting people are only doing so to maintain order but ultimately everything they actually do is in the name of maintaining private profit.
At some point in the future, people will look back at things like this in utter confusion - jail-time and a massive waste of police resources in order to stop people from sharing books…
They aren't worried about people sharing books at this point, or at least they shouldn't be. They're worried about people building their own models.
Here's something I'd pay for (probably with some sort of sketchy crypto, sadly): send me a huge-ass hard drive (or array of drives) with a complete mirror of Z-Library, Library Genesis, and sci-hub on it.
That will be a very reasonable thing to expect in a few years. Based
on the rate of advancement of memory density and LLM tech I wrote this
[0] a while back.
Containment of "the human corpus" (all significant written works since
antiquity) is a lost cause for the authorities. Stunts like this
Australian thing are symbolic rituals by the dying publishing industry
against a downhill battle.
For a brief window you'll have Fahrenheit 451 style police trying to
enforce physical warrants and seizure of "illegal reading materials",
but proliferation, diminishing size, sheer utility and cost of
enforcement will soon make the whole misadventure water under the
bridge.
Yeah, we will look back at early 21st century as a sorry bloody
episode to be embarrassed by.
Isn't anyone capable of building their own models technically sophisticated enough to get around basically any normal anti-piracy measure? Or for that matter has already downloaded all the books?
Yes. Many do. Dig deeper and it is often the publishers rather than creators pushing such bans. Authors want sales, but in such a competative industry the increased publicity from illegal sharing can be worth more than hypothetical lost sales. Publishers have different motivations as they manage catalogs rather than individual books.
Hopefully in the future we begin to understand that this way of supporting authors severely limits progress in our society due to our inability to share books as widely as possible.
It makes a lot more sense when you realize that the machinery of the state (including especially law enforcement) exists solely to preserve and maintain the existing socioeconomic order and not to, you know, enforce laws or protect the public.
The system is working as designed. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. It’s everywhere.
Banning sites that share books. I guess they have already addressed all the illegal pornography, music, pirated soccer games, terrorism, offshore gambling, harrassment, credit card fraud, antiseminitism, homophobia, body shaming, fake news, doxing, zero day sales, and every other great evil on the internet. It has been a long journey, but now that all those are dealt with, we can now crack down on people wanting to read too many books.
> antiseminitism, homophobia, body shaming, fake news, doxing
Careful now. Literacy is a noble goal, but piracy is still a crime. Once you start taking down sites for things that aren't crimes, everything's fair game.
Considering current events in Israel and the absurd PR war on social media, it doesn't take much for even a Jew to earn the anti-Semitic achievement right now.
Be very careful about calling piracy a crime. It can be, but only in specific circumstances. Simple copyright violation is not generally criminal. It normally has to rise to the level of financial gain in order to trigger actual criminal laws. In this case, it is the wire fraud and money laundering charges that doom them.
How is the promise to never again participate in warfare compromised? Clearly participating in international criminal investigations is not a military act.
Readit News
These seizures are some of the only legal actions which are just emblematic of pure corruption. The government serving the interests of middlemen whose primary impact on science is making it less accessible and charging rents on it. It’s a hellish parody of copyright law.
If I worked for Elsevier I’d feel worse about what I did for a living than if I worked for Marlboro.
Dead Comment
https://torrentfreak.com/home-confined-z-library-defendants-...
Here's something I'd pay for (probably with some sort of sketchy crypto, sadly): send me a huge-ass hard drive (or array of drives) with a complete mirror of Z-Library, Library Genesis, and sci-hub on it.
Containment of "the human corpus" (all significant written works since antiquity) is a lost cause for the authorities. Stunts like this Australian thing are symbolic rituals by the dying publishing industry against a downhill battle.
For a brief window you'll have Fahrenheit 451 style police trying to enforce physical warrants and seizure of "illegal reading materials", but proliferation, diminishing size, sheer utility and cost of enforcement will soon make the whole misadventure water under the bridge.
Yeah, we will look back at early 21st century as a sorry bloody episode to be embarrassed by.
[0] https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/2048-informatio...
The system is working as designed. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. It’s everywhere.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=A0wMSNlBBjc
An you Dad, how did you spend your day in service of our cause?
After a pause, which might be a hint of an amount of independent thinking, but not really.
The father responds: I protected America by preventing poor people from reading enough books!
What a world we live in. Can't wait to see what's next.
Careful now. Literacy is a noble goal, but piracy is still a crime. Once you start taking down sites for things that aren't crimes, everything's fair game.
Considering current events in Israel and the absurd PR war on social media, it doesn't take much for even a Jew to earn the anti-Semitic achievement right now.
Deleted Comment