If operating z library is their only "crime" I wish the couple luck and thank them for their service. Hard to say what the money laundering charges are about though
Apparently z-library received user donations and at some point used that donated money to make purchases intended to promote the carrying on of unlawful activities, probably buying hardware or services relating to the operation of z-library, which qualifies as money laundering. Even though it doesn't fit the normal conception of money laundering (hiding the source of illegal money) it still falls under the same law.
> In or about and between January 2018 and November 2022, both dates being approximate and inclusive, within the Eastern District of New York and elsewhere, the defendants ANTON NAPOLSKY, also known as "Anton Napolskiy," and VALERJIA ERMAKOVA, together with others, did knowingly and intentionally conspire to conduct one or more financial transactions in and affecting interstate and foreign commerce, to wit: deposits, withdrawals and transfers of funds and monetary instruments, which transactions in fact involved the proceeds of specified unlawful activity, to wit: criminal copyright, as alleged in Count One, in violation of Title 17, United States Code, Section 506(a)(1)(A), and wire fraud, as alleged in Counts Three and Four, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1343 (collectively, the "Specified Unlawful Activities"), knowing that the property involved in the transactions represented the proceeds of some form of unlawful activity, with intent to promote the carrying on of the Specified Unlawful Activities, contrary to Title 18, United States Code, Section 1956(a)(l)(A)(i).
> Hard to say what the money laundering charges are about though
US federal prosecutors use a very expansive definition of “money laundering”. Basically, any financial transaction made with funds considered to be “proceeds of crime” can result in a money laundering charge. Contrary to the traditional definition of “money laundering”, there doesn’t need to be any attempt by the defendant to obscure the origin of the funds. All that is required is the defendant knew (at times in a rather loose sense of “know”) the connection between the funds and the underlying crime
Basically all money in circulation is prior proceeds of crime (and also will soon be going back to crime) and all reasonable lukewarm IQ people know this. It's such a chicken shit law.
Wouldn't this just force future operators of z-library and similar services to accept donations in crypto only, making it even harder to shut down?
I mean imagine if you took donations for some mundane fan art patreon website that ends up violating US copyright laws and you used the proceeds to buy yourself Subway sandwich and a new laptop to create copyrighted art, you are labelled a money launderer.
doesn't such draconian ruling end up driving these type of services deeper underground and closer to actual money laundering which only leads to more proliferation and opacity?
Same here. If they should ever show up at my doorstep (very unlikely though) I would gladly hide them for as long as they need to.
This is laughable, there are killers, syndicate bosses, drug dealers and human traffickers out there on the run, maybe the prosecutors should get their priorities a bit in order...
Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova have done humanity a great service and I sincerely thank them for it. They are true heroes. I hope they remain safe and out of reach from the deranged laws and the "justice" circuses that are US courts and their jesters.
For anyone wishing to engage in a public good that upsets a well-funded US industry (like sharing books, building emulators or compatibility software, fan games, etc), please consider hosting your project on Tor from the start.
If evil can flourish on Tor without prosecution, then so should the good.
I wish the publishing industry would create a flatrate model for books and magazines, I would gladly pay for it. With the current business model, digital versions are often more expensive than the printed one. Shadow libraries like z-lib, scihub or Annas Archive are just a symptom: we have a near unlimited demand for digital knowledge, but the supply logic still based on the idea of paper and scarcity.
Digital products are also worse than physical ones, because the content cartels have used DRM to trample on your first-sale rights like resale and lending. It's no coincidence that digital books are often more expensive than paper books, because the publishers have killed the second hand market.
digital books also run the risk of being censored or disappeared from your devices overnight. Another nice thing about physical books is that you don't have to worry about anyone spying on you and collecting data on what you read/when/where/how often/how quickly, etc.
Indeed, most movies make most of the money in the first few weeks of showing. Were it not for the physical limitation of having to go to a theater, much of that money won't be made.
Same with books: were it not for the need to buy a book before it shows up on libgen, or the need to have a physical book, book sales would plummet. Actually this is exactly what some of the anti-copyright activists proclaim as the goal: removing most of the need to buy a book, at least from the publisher.
Of course, there is the counter-example of music: people who pirate music also buy a lot of music, when the price is below the impulse buy threshold; see Bandcamp or Apple Music. The lack of copy protection does not incite them to pirate the same material, because they want to support their favorite bands. Those bands which did not sign up with major labels, of course, because the major labels earn and pay a significantly different amounts of money.
O'Reilly has had a subscription platform for technical books for a long time now. Used to be called "Safari Books Online", now it's "O'Reilly Online Learning". It's become a pretty standard benefit for public libraries and large workplaces.
It's important not to lump all 'publishers' in a single bucket here. The big 4-5 fight new models, but many outside of those are happy to try different models. See the many publishers who deliver DRM free files or work with libraries using flat rate models.
There has to be aligned interest and feedback mechanisms for that to work. Otherwise there will be no reasons for publishers to not take 99% cuts for the subscription.
The U.S. fed spends more money and political capital going after open libraries than the numerous and destructive violent offenders. Federal corruption is now so common it's a base expectation of life. That's how we know cyberpunk isn't fiction.
Most author's don't even make money from their books. Publishers take a massive chunk out of any profits they make, leaving them with barely anything.
So even if you buy the book, the author isn't really getting that much, they're probably still starving. The truth is it's the publishers that's not getting paid, and that's why all these lawsuits are happening. The political power one needs to even get someone extradited alone implies it's not just random authors banding together to sue, it's powerful rich publishers, someone with political connections. And prosecutors are going all out it seems, piling on BS charges of money laundering??
I hope the zadmins win. Maybe the ACLU can get in on this to drop the case, but they generally only take open-shut cases in their favor sadly.
That is not how publishing works. Publisher produces the book, sells to book stores, and pays royalties to the author out of their portion. The author gets 10-15% for every book sold. The whole point of going traditional publishing route is to put the risk of producing the book on the publisher. Self-published authors get bigger cut, but have to pay for editing and promotion.
There are advances where publishers give money to the author before the book is even completed. The royalties first pay off the advance before author gets royalty checks. Most authors never pay off the advance, but they don't have to pay it back.
Maybe for books, but for scientific journals, the sort of stuff on sci-hub, authors get nothing. And of course they rely on volunteers for technical review. All publishers bring to the table is branding/reputation.
the author in theory gets royalties for every book sold (though usually not that high), but almost all books do get an advance, and as you point out, the royalties are so small that almost no books ever 'earn out' of the advance. so almost no authors actually get royalties for every book sold. they do get the copyright, though
I have an extremely hard time believing that editing and whatnot means that it's reasonable for the author to only get 15% of each sale. This is especially the case for ebooks where the marginal cost of each copy is practically zero.
Wow it must be really hard to be on the run like this. They can't have much money, I'm sure the few donations they get aren't lasting long and they had all the lawyers to pay for too. I hope they have made it to Russia.
While this service is somehow piracy it also highlights the huge gap of public libraries in the digital age, and they specialise specifically in scientific works which are often overpriced by publishers as far as i understand.
Readit News
> In or about and between January 2018 and November 2022, both dates being approximate and inclusive, within the Eastern District of New York and elsewhere, the defendants ANTON NAPOLSKY, also known as "Anton Napolskiy," and VALERJIA ERMAKOVA, together with others, did knowingly and intentionally conspire to conduct one or more financial transactions in and affecting interstate and foreign commerce, to wit: deposits, withdrawals and transfers of funds and monetary instruments, which transactions in fact involved the proceeds of specified unlawful activity, to wit: criminal copyright, as alleged in Count One, in violation of Title 17, United States Code, Section 506(a)(1)(A), and wire fraud, as alleged in Counts Three and Four, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1343 (collectively, the "Specified Unlawful Activities"), knowing that the property involved in the transactions represented the proceeds of some form of unlawful activity, with intent to promote the carrying on of the Specified Unlawful Activities, contrary to Title 18, United States Code, Section 1956(a)(l)(A)(i).
https://torrentfreak.com/images/z_library_indictment_0.pdf
http://loginzlib2vrak5zzpcocc3ouizykn6k5qecgj2tzlnab5wcbqhem...
US federal prosecutors use a very expansive definition of “money laundering”. Basically, any financial transaction made with funds considered to be “proceeds of crime” can result in a money laundering charge. Contrary to the traditional definition of “money laundering”, there doesn’t need to be any attempt by the defendant to obscure the origin of the funds. All that is required is the defendant knew (at times in a rather loose sense of “know”) the connection between the funds and the underlying crime
I mean imagine if you took donations for some mundane fan art patreon website that ends up violating US copyright laws and you used the proceeds to buy yourself Subway sandwich and a new laptop to create copyrighted art, you are labelled a money launderer.
doesn't such draconian ruling end up driving these type of services deeper underground and closer to actual money laundering which only leads to more proliferation and opacity?
This is laughable, there are killers, syndicate bosses, drug dealers and human traffickers out there on the run, maybe the prosecutors should get their priorities a bit in order...
This seems to be the indictment: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/65760207/14/united-stat...
This is the motion to dismiss (filed July 12th 2023): https://torrentfreak.com/images/momodismiss.pdf
And this is the prosecution's response (filed August 14th 2023): https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/65760207/17/united-stat...
Apparently the defense filed a reply to the response on September 11th 2023, but I can't find it without having to pay for it.
There doesn't seem to be any additional information, it doesn't seem like there's been a hearing on the motion.
For anyone wishing to engage in a public good that upsets a well-funded US industry (like sharing books, building emulators or compatibility software, fan games, etc), please consider hosting your project on Tor from the start.
If evil can flourish on Tor without prosecution, then so should the good.
"A 'Netflix of Books' would put publishing houses out of business"
https://www.elysian.press/p/no-one-buys-books
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40119958
Same with books: were it not for the need to buy a book before it shows up on libgen, or the need to have a physical book, book sales would plummet. Actually this is exactly what some of the anti-copyright activists proclaim as the goal: removing most of the need to buy a book, at least from the publisher.
Of course, there is the counter-example of music: people who pirate music also buy a lot of music, when the price is below the impulse buy threshold; see Bandcamp or Apple Music. The lack of copy protection does not incite them to pirate the same material, because they want to support their favorite bands. Those bands which did not sign up with major labels, of course, because the major labels earn and pay a significantly different amounts of money.
So even if you buy the book, the author isn't really getting that much, they're probably still starving. The truth is it's the publishers that's not getting paid, and that's why all these lawsuits are happening. The political power one needs to even get someone extradited alone implies it's not just random authors banding together to sue, it's powerful rich publishers, someone with political connections. And prosecutors are going all out it seems, piling on BS charges of money laundering??
I hope the zadmins win. Maybe the ACLU can get in on this to drop the case, but they generally only take open-shut cases in their favor sadly.
There are advances where publishers give money to the author before the book is even completed. The royalties first pay off the advance before author gets royalty checks. Most authors never pay off the advance, but they don't have to pay it back.
https://authorsguild.org/news/authors-guild-files-suit-again...
https://bookriot.com/disney-must-pay-task-force/
https://lunch.publishersmarketplace.com/2021/04/authors-accu...
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/author-loses-fight-for-unpaid-...
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/authors-sues-two-predat...
https://www.thebookseller.com/news/cengage-faces-fresh-lawsu...
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/p...
https://writerbeware.blog/2022/08/26/complaints-and-changes-...
The music industry has a similar problem where artists often have to resort to courts to see money that they're owed.
While this service is somehow piracy it also highlights the huge gap of public libraries in the digital age, and they specialise specifically in scientific works which are often overpriced by publishers as far as i understand.