FBI and Austria's C4 Hit Z-Library with a New Wave of Domain Seizures

[faeriechangling]

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.

[acheong08]

Why spend so much effort taking down societally good sites rather than taking down real criminals?

[splix]

Easy to execute and has no risks, all for the same salary. So the system gives no incentive to take down real criminals

[pbjtime]

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.

[ametrau]

Regular folk can’t afford that level of policing.

[ourmandave]

Argentina already 'home confined' two Russians who are battling extradition to the US to face charges.

https://torrentfreak.com/home-confined-z-library-defendants-...

[wuiheerfoj]

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…

[CamperBob2]

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.

[ourmandave]

If you're an author whose livelihood depends on sales, would you still call it sharing?

[carom]

It's wild how much law enforcement just works for corporate interests.

[sneak]

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.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=A0wMSNlBBjc

[CapitalistCartr]

The legal and political system exists to defend property of the wealthy, not liberty.

[sva_]

The fact that the seizures happened on the "1 year anniversary" makes it particularly macabre.

[sandworm101]

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.

[canimaginelol]

Somewhere at a dinner table. The son who looks upon his father as the victor of the west. He utters that daily question steeped in curiosity:

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.

[jstarfish]

> 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.

[FirmwareBurner]

So much for Austria's so called "neutrality".

[WhatsName]

How is the promise to never again participate in warfare compromised? Clearly participating in international criminal investigations is not a military act.

[mtmail]

Austria might be neutral on warfare and multi-national defense agreement (not a member of NATO) but I think that's a separate issue from copyright law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Neutrality

[blueflow]

That was Switzerland