“Most notorious” illegal shadow library (LibGen) sued by textbook publishers
“Most notorious” illegal shadow library (LibGen) sued by textbook publishers
Previous efforts to unmask the people behind Libgen have failed.
![“Most notorious” illegal shadow library sued by textbook publishers [Updated]](https://derp.foo/pictrs/image/a768084a-5871-4aef-a26a-3beaa984f535.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.
I would feel more sympathy if textbooks weren't hundreds of dollars and didn't have new revisions coming out every year meaning you can't use older revisions and can't sell them for shit after you are done with them.
"Remember, you have to have the new 8th edition. Only one paragraph was changed, but the pagination is different, and you won't be able to keep organized if you have an older edition" - A University Professor on the first day of class who had the class use a book he wrote.
Literally how it always was. And the new version was always like 300 dollars and you needed to buy the book for every class. Yea, hard to feel much sympathy at all for the publishers. And let's not forget the classes like that where you NEEDED the book but then you used it twice throughout the semester. I've been out of school the better part of a decade and it STILL makes my blood boil remembering it.
The current scam is expensive access to an online system for homework that is only sold with the textbook.
Jesus. Anything to milk the students for as much money as possible while putting in as little as they possibly can.
I wouldn't. College is already prohibitively expensive as-is. You're telling me I have to pay all this money for tuition, and you're not even going to provide me with the materials I need?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
But after briefly disappearing, Libgen popped back up and has been online ever since, operating in defiance of that order—as well as court orders "in several countries, including Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, and the United Kingdom," publishers' complaint filed yesterday said.
Those countries even tried ordering "Internet service providers to block access to Libgen Sites as a result of infringement actions," publishers said, all seemingly to no avail.
This includes tons of students whom publishers claimed are "bombarded with messages to use Libgen sites" on social media rather than paying full price for textbooks.
Instead of paying publishers to distribute books like a real library does, the complaint alleged, Libgen profits off pirated works by running advertisements alongside e-book downloads for things like online games and browser extensions.
Libgen staff, the publishers alleged, hide behind usernames like "librarian" or "bookwarrior" and rely "on proxy services that specifically conceal website operators’ identifying information."
Thanks in part to these US companies, Libgen operators can "rely on the anonymity of the Internet and their overseas locations to hide their names and addresses and frustrate enforcement efforts against them," publishers alleged.
The original article contains 873 words, the summary contains 188 words. Saved 78%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
My reply has nothing to do with the story but I love this bot