I like reading about IPFS, but I do not really have the time to learn about it and get involved.
Last I remember, Z-Library was having an issue scaling the DHS to handle the number of files [1]. Did those issues get resolved? How is it going now? Also, is there anything being done to ensure every file has seeders?
I’ve dived deep into IPFS and built several prototypes on top of it. It ended up not being performant enough for me, and that was after heavily modifying the codebase so that it was true p2p browser & server (their webrtc transport had a lot of issues and they didn’t seem too interested in it, but my needs required it as a backbone).
The security was also a concern, and the scaling had issues. Pinning millions of small items got so slow it would not function. Then I ended up having concerns over hashed based addressing being easy to censor with the architecture IPFS was using (more hub & spoke than anything, given signaling and relay servers were centralized).
I could go on but I ran into so many issues I ended up implementing my own solution that did everything I wanted. Wanted to squeeze even more performance, I’ve been converting that solution to Rust.
This was a couple years ago so maybe things have changed since I used it. Last I checked, they seemed busy on Filecoin.
The idea of IPFS is great and I want to see it succeed, but I think that they got so caught up in their jargon and modularity, the project lost track of some fundamentals.
I just did a quick test, it could do with slightly fuzzier searching ('Epub' as an extension got me no result while 'epub' did, a drop down menu with options might be better/simpler for some fields) but, otherwise, it seems functional and useful.
I got an error when visiting zlib.zu1k.com/.
Error code: 1020
Ray ID: 7819e5389c898e4e
Country: IL
Data center: tlv03
IP: 85.65.187.66
Timestamp: 2022-12-30 09:54:40 UTC
It's possible they were "hugged" enough to instigate a firewall rule dramatically cutting down allowed visitors, which would explain the Error 1020.
Might be worth reaching out to the site's creator -- info taken from their site [https://zu1k-com/about/]:
"If you have any questions to communicate with me, the preferred way is to comment directly in the comment area of the corresponding blog post, and I will receive an email notification
In addition, you can also reach me in the following ways:
People should stop over-using CloudFlare for everything. IMO it is not good for IFS "hosting", either.
They act like gatekeepers. Along with blocking, as in this case, they make browser assumptions that force visitors to use one of the most recent mainstream "approved" and unmodified browsers.
For other browsers, they serve "Checking if the site connection is secure" with javascript fingerprinting and a captcha, and sometimes even solving the captcha won't let me in. i have also seen frontends misbehaving due to them not expecting cloudflare error response codes.
Some dvelopers apparenly just blindly enable cloudflare and don't care. :(
Is the catalog on IPFS different to the catalog available via one of the libgen front-ends? I just performed a search on both for one title and it found it right away on a libgen front-end, but not here.
Z-library began as a Libgen mirror but split off and stopped sharing uploads. It's kind of scummy, but I guess that just means people need to put more effort into uploading its contents back to Libgen.
I had the opposite... a book I was looking for on a lib gen front end a few days ago but could not find came up here (the Narada translation of Dhammapada if curious)
Something that has always bothered me about z-lib and libgen and so on is the impossibility of being able to tell quality from the different uploads.
Sometimes the epubs are very good, with a good cover and metadata as well as chapters and no weird aberrations; other times, they're unreadable. But the only thing you have to judge quality is size and general description of the upload which in this website it's been reduced so everything looks the same.
I think the website looks good, but yeah, would be nice if we could rate quality in some way.
The books are free, if you download the wrong version of a book you can simply try another and it costs you no more than a minute of your time.
Do you know how it worked before we had the internet for books? You had to go to a library yourself, which may have taken an hour of your day just in the journey, then hope the library had the book you wanted. If not, you may have to wait weeks for another library in the system to mail the book to your library.
Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate the access that libgen and z-lib provide and think on the whole it is beneficial to society. It is still not paying for people's work though.
A question about z-lib, libgen, and regular libraries
Suppose I check an e-book out of my local library. Because Reasons, the library doesn't "own" unlimited "copies" of the book, so each "copy" can only be checked out to one patron at a time and if there are enough holds then a patron can't renew a checked out book. In short, ebooks in libraries are just like regular paper books, except to you don't have leave your house.
I had this ebook on hold for three months because it's very popular, but finally have it on my device, but I only have 3 weeks before I can no longer read it because of holds. I get about 2/3rds the way through before lock closes on the bits on my device. It's a very popular book, it will be 3 months before I can read it again.
I go online, use some service, find the exact same book, down to all but the locking bits, and download it, finish reading it a few days later, and then forget about it. I might delete it later if I need room.
Is that a crime? Have either the author or publisher lost money? On the one hand, I can say yes because if the libraries purchased more "copies", the waiting list wouldn't be so long, I might have been able to renew it and finish it. On the other hand, I wasn't going to buy the book myself, and the library has to balance budget and demand, so they probably wouldn't purchase additional "copies".
What ethical questions do authors and readers see here?
In many countries it is at least a copyright violation, although it should be noted that downloading (not sharing while torrenting) is legal in some places.
> Have either the author or publisher lost money?
On average, probably yes, because some people would buy the book, some libraries would get more budget or allocate more of the budget to that book, and most importantly, if you did re-borrow it in 3 months it'd further expand the waitlist, perhaps making someone go "screw that, I'm not waiting 4 months" and buy it.
OTOH, if you took all the money being spent on entertainment (books movies etc.), collected that as a tax, distributed it to the entertainment industry based on what people actually consume, and in exchange made everything available to everyone, there would be no loss of revenue and everyone would benefit from much higher, friction-free levels of access.
That's part of what made Netflix work. It extracted ~$120/year of revenue and gave access to everything. Now, with all the competing services, they probably still don't extract more than one service's yearly fee over the same population (because few people have more than 1-2 services, and the ones that just gave up and went back to piracy probably make up for the ones that now pay for 2 instead of 1 service) but people now have much less access.
Without a massive "media tax" which would have practical issues that don't make it feasible or desirable, some friction on free access is necessary or nobody would pay for content, and at the same time that friction harms society by limiting access. Piracy puts an upper bound on how much friction can be added before people go the yarrr way.
My layman's understanding of copyright law says you didn't commit a crime, but whoever sent you the book did commit a crime. My understanding is that it's not illegal to download a book, it's illegal to distribute a book. (Or other copyrighted work.)
I think the central ethical question to piracy is that ultimately, buying a book someone wrote is fair to the author. The author is part of a society -- our planet, did something to contribute to society, and it's fair that we reward that person if we also benefit from their work. Therefore, whenever you benefit from someone else's work, how do we reward them.
Now, I think this question is nuanced. For example, let's take Harry Potter. That book has sold millions. In my mind, J.K. Rowling has already been rewarded by humanity for her work many times over, so if you were to pirate her book then I think that is a far lesser evil than pirating a book written by an author who has barely made any sales.
Basically, I view the question of piracy as follows: (a) have we rewarded the author enough for that specific work? and (b) if not, then it's not right to pirate their book, and I should buy it. I think everyone should ask themselves that question.
The same with movies. Marvel movies are a money-making machine and they have more than enough money to keep them going. An indie film much less so.
The question of whether an author has been rewarded enough is tricky. For example, if Elon Musk wrote a book, I would have no problem pirating it in a microsecond because society rewarded him enough. But maybe that's not so clear-cut because the editor might be poor. Thus, I think it's safer to go on the basis of sales rather than the wealth of the author, except of course if the author is self-published. In that case, if they are rich, then who cares. Of course, what is rich? Well it's hard to give exact numbers but if they have 10 million dollars that's definitely rich enough.
Not an answer to your question, but interesting context for how eBooks work with libraries. And how not checking out a second time effectively is a loss of one “use” that may have directed the library to spend more on this book, rather than another. Sounds like you’re aware. Loved this Planet Money podcast
It is difficult to determine the quality of content on websites like z-lib and libgen because the only available indicators are size and a general description of the upload, which can make all content appear similar and leave users unable to differentiate between high and low quality content.
What exactly is Z-Library right now? The domains were seized, and there doesn't seem to be a way to access the library or add new books to it. Is it now simply a collection that exists alongside libgen? Is it being run elsewhere? Does the Ipfs mirror get updated from somewhere?
I've always been able to access it via tor which is operating normally.
Just be sure to confirm a disposable email address with them or they'll never let you in. Registering an account by itself is no longer enough when using tor and their website will block you and not tell you why.
[+] [-] Nican|3 years ago|reply
Last I remember, Z-Library was having an issue scaling the DHS to handle the number of files [1]. Did those issues get resolved? How is it going now? Also, is there anything being done to ensure every file has seeders?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33716560
[+] [-] survirtual|3 years ago|reply
The security was also a concern, and the scaling had issues. Pinning millions of small items got so slow it would not function. Then I ended up having concerns over hashed based addressing being easy to censor with the architecture IPFS was using (more hub & spoke than anything, given signaling and relay servers were centralized).
I could go on but I ran into so many issues I ended up implementing my own solution that did everything I wanted. Wanted to squeeze even more performance, I’ve been converting that solution to Rust.
This was a couple years ago so maybe things have changed since I used it. Last I checked, they seemed busy on Filecoin.
The idea of IPFS is great and I want to see it succeed, but I think that they got so caught up in their jargon and modularity, the project lost track of some fundamentals.
[+] [-] ComputerGuru|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benneh|3 years ago|reply
Hackernoon released a blog post comparing the two projects.
https://hackernoon.com/whats-the-difference-between-ipfs-and...
[+] [-] steponlego|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nestorD|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jraby3|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0ct4via|3 years ago|reply
Might be worth reaching out to the site's creator -- info taken from their site [https://zu1k-com/about/]:
"If you have any questions to communicate with me, the preferred way is to comment directly in the comment area of the corresponding blog post, and I will receive an email notification
In addition, you can also reach me in the following ways:
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @zu1k_lv
GitHub: @zu1k
Keybase: @zu1k
Matrix: @zu1k:mozilla.org
My PGP public key can be obtained at https://pgp.zu1k.com or hkps: //keyserver.ubuntu.com
( 2A65 F6F3 1EDA D922 D7E7 E97B AE38 1A8F B1EF 2CC8)"
[+] [-] neop1x|3 years ago|reply
They act like gatekeepers. Along with blocking, as in this case, they make browser assumptions that force visitors to use one of the most recent mainstream "approved" and unmodified browsers.
For other browsers, they serve "Checking if the site connection is secure" with javascript fingerprinting and a captcha, and sometimes even solving the captcha won't let me in. i have also seen frontends misbehaving due to them not expecting cloudflare error response codes.
Some dvelopers apparenly just blindly enable cloudflare and don't care. :(
[+] [-] nukemandan|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SanjayMehta|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deanc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DoItToMe81|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] satvikpendem|3 years ago|reply
Libgen is not the same as Z-library, there are many books on Z that are not available on libgen.
[+] [-] derrida|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jerojero|3 years ago|reply
Sometimes the epubs are very good, with a good cover and metadata as well as chapters and no weird aberrations; other times, they're unreadable. But the only thing you have to judge quality is size and general description of the upload which in this website it's been reduced so everything looks the same.
I think the website looks good, but yeah, would be nice if we could rate quality in some way.
[+] [-] ok123456|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LarryMullins|3 years ago|reply
Do you know how it worked before we had the internet for books? You had to go to a library yourself, which may have taken an hour of your day just in the journey, then hope the library had the book you wanted. If not, you may have to wait weeks for another library in the system to mail the book to your library.
[+] [-] leokennis|3 years ago|reply
- Metadata and a cover are one click away
- Removing excessive spacing, padding etc. is a few clicks
[+] [-] Tams80|3 years ago|reply
Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate the access that libgen and z-lib provide and think on the whole it is beneficial to society. It is still not paying for people's work though.
[+] [-] cratermoon|3 years ago|reply
Suppose I check an e-book out of my local library. Because Reasons, the library doesn't "own" unlimited "copies" of the book, so each "copy" can only be checked out to one patron at a time and if there are enough holds then a patron can't renew a checked out book. In short, ebooks in libraries are just like regular paper books, except to you don't have leave your house.
I had this ebook on hold for three months because it's very popular, but finally have it on my device, but I only have 3 weeks before I can no longer read it because of holds. I get about 2/3rds the way through before lock closes on the bits on my device. It's a very popular book, it will be 3 months before I can read it again.
I go online, use some service, find the exact same book, down to all but the locking bits, and download it, finish reading it a few days later, and then forget about it. I might delete it later if I need room.
Is that a crime? Have either the author or publisher lost money? On the one hand, I can say yes because if the libraries purchased more "copies", the waiting list wouldn't be so long, I might have been able to renew it and finish it. On the other hand, I wasn't going to buy the book myself, and the library has to balance budget and demand, so they probably wouldn't purchase additional "copies".
What ethical questions do authors and readers see here?
[+] [-] tgsovlerkhgsel|3 years ago|reply
In many countries it is at least a copyright violation, although it should be noted that downloading (not sharing while torrenting) is legal in some places.
> Have either the author or publisher lost money?
On average, probably yes, because some people would buy the book, some libraries would get more budget or allocate more of the budget to that book, and most importantly, if you did re-borrow it in 3 months it'd further expand the waitlist, perhaps making someone go "screw that, I'm not waiting 4 months" and buy it.
OTOH, if you took all the money being spent on entertainment (books movies etc.), collected that as a tax, distributed it to the entertainment industry based on what people actually consume, and in exchange made everything available to everyone, there would be no loss of revenue and everyone would benefit from much higher, friction-free levels of access.
That's part of what made Netflix work. It extracted ~$120/year of revenue and gave access to everything. Now, with all the competing services, they probably still don't extract more than one service's yearly fee over the same population (because few people have more than 1-2 services, and the ones that just gave up and went back to piracy probably make up for the ones that now pay for 2 instead of 1 service) but people now have much less access.
Without a massive "media tax" which would have practical issues that don't make it feasible or desirable, some friction on free access is necessary or nobody would pay for content, and at the same time that friction harms society by limiting access. Piracy puts an upper bound on how much friction can be added before people go the yarrr way.
[+] [-] wccrawford|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] juuular|3 years ago|reply
Reverse engineering yet another ebook format (Nemanja Mijailovic) https://mijailovic.net/2022/12/25/hkpropel/
[+] [-] vouaobrasil|3 years ago|reply
Now, I think this question is nuanced. For example, let's take Harry Potter. That book has sold millions. In my mind, J.K. Rowling has already been rewarded by humanity for her work many times over, so if you were to pirate her book then I think that is a far lesser evil than pirating a book written by an author who has barely made any sales.
Basically, I view the question of piracy as follows: (a) have we rewarded the author enough for that specific work? and (b) if not, then it's not right to pirate their book, and I should buy it. I think everyone should ask themselves that question.
The same with movies. Marvel movies are a money-making machine and they have more than enough money to keep them going. An indie film much less so.
The question of whether an author has been rewarded enough is tricky. For example, if Elon Musk wrote a book, I would have no problem pirating it in a microsecond because society rewarded him enough. But maybe that's not so clear-cut because the editor might be poor. Thus, I think it's safer to go on the basis of sales rather than the wealth of the author, except of course if the author is self-published. In that case, if they are rich, then who cares. Of course, what is rich? Well it's hard to give exact numbers but if they have 10 million dollars that's definitely rich enough.
[+] [-] kleinishere|3 years ago|reply
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id2907834...
[+] [-] baptiste313|3 years ago|reply
- https://zlib.freedit.eu
Or else the project is opensource you can install it by yourself:
- https://github.com/zu1k/zlib-searcher
[+] [-] bootyclub|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nyolfen|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcol1n0|3 years ago|reply
Error code: 1020
Ray ID: 781a36f1b9b0babd
Country: IT
I got an error when visiting zlib.zu1k.com:
Error code: 1020 Ray ID: 781a37c3aeacbae1 Country: IT Data center: mxp03 IP: 31.157.83.62 Timestamp: 2022-12-30 10:51:01 UTC
[+] [-] Jamie9912|3 years ago|reply
The site owner may have set restrictions that prevent you from accessing the site.
[+] [-] Shadowgamer195|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Thorentis|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zuiii|3 years ago|reply
Just be sure to confirm a disposable email address with them or they'll never let you in. Registering an account by itself is no longer enough when using tor and their website will block you and not tell you why.
[+] [-] netfortius|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] renaissance_tea|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mordae|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Alifatisk|3 years ago|reply
What did I do?
[+] [-] staunch|3 years ago|reply
This "AI book reader" doesn't exist yet, right?
[+] [-] uwagar|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bertman|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unraveller|3 years ago|reply
I think I hit the cf limit after 10 searches.
[+] [-] Jamie9912|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Piezoid|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pilimi_anna|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rand846633|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jarboot|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway923857|3 years ago|reply
zlib.zu1k.com’s DNS address could not be found. Diagnosing the problem.