
The Rise of Pirate Libraries (2016) - yitchelle
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-rise-of-illegal-pirate-libraries
======
resf
Although descriptive of the legal situation, I object to the term "pirate
library". There is no practical difference between a pirate library and a
brick and mortar library, except the larger stock of books online. My local
library even has a photocopier.

A library is a place where you can choose a book, and read it for free. That's
how it's been for thousands of years. Copyright is a modern intruder and has
no right to brand bone fide libraries as "pirate".

~~~
DanBC
You know authors get payments from loans that libraries make, right? (At
least, in UK and Ireland)

[https://www.plr.uk.com/](https://www.plr.uk.com/)

~~~
delinka
I've never heard of such in the US. I'm now reading your link, but I'd like to
hear if anyone know of similar arrangements in the US.

~~~
kasey_junk
In the US libraries pay for their physical books, which pay royalties per
usual.

For digital media they usually have a negotiated rate where they pay royalties
and limit the number of copies "out on loan".

~~~
stinkytaco
Negotiated might be strong term. Most libraries work through middlemen who do
that negotiation and are then given a rate that they can take or leave.
There's no "shopping around" for digital media since publishers control the
pricing and availability. This is proving to be a budgeting challenge since
digital media is more expensive that physical. There are no discounts from
wholesalers for bulk purchasing. Many libraries get physical media at up to a
40% discount from retail because they buy so much.

Of course, digital media does not need to be maintained. It does not need to
be cataloged and reshelved; it does not wear out or get damaged. But libraries
are still adapting to this shift since there still is a great deal of physical
media checking out and that staff is still needed.

~~~
kasey_junk
The library landscape is surprisingly varied in the United States. Big systems
such as New York, Chicago and Los Angelos exert a huge amount of control on
the "middle men" that service them (and a 40% discount is where _all_ systems
start and always have). This is of course not surprising. Like all parts of
the book industry the ecosystem surrounding libraries is changing very fast.

The digital media side is not as clear as you are making it out to be.
Publishers do not in fact set the pricing and availability, because the
publishers don't particularly want to be in the business of servicing
libraries (just like they don't want to be in the business of library binding
and cataloging) so they have to allow third parties the ability to do some
negotiations. In many ways its just like physical books (the cost of physical
books is largely not the act of creating the physical copy).

The difference is that the classic rift between desires of libraries and
publishers is more stark with electronic books. Libraries want to provide
access as cheaply as possible usually as a governmental agency and publishers
want to have a profitable business.

That doesn't even begin to talk about the existential crisis libraries are
going through. Its a fairly interesting thing to watch as an outside observer.

 __I don 't work in this space but my wife does and I've had drinks with
enough publishers, jobbers and librarians to see it as fascinating __

~~~
stinkytaco
I am a librarian who works with digital media, so I see this industry close up
as part of my job. So a few things:

The vast majority of libraries are not NYPL, LAPL, King County PL, etc. Most
are medium to small and servicing almost every town in the United States. They
are arranged in a dizzying array of geographic, bureaucratic and budgetary
configurations. I once worked with a library that was a unified system with
shelf level access to items, but every municipality funded its own local
branch, so money went into a central system and had to be accounted for when
purchasing items. They handled 15 different budgets. It was staggering.

This make negotiation impossible. We rely on vendors like Overdrive, Baker and
Taylor, Midwest Tape, Recorded Books, etc, to provide access to digital
materials. And though there are sales, digital materials are unquestionably
more expensive. I work in a system with a service population of about 500,000
(it's a statewide consortia of local libraries), and hold lists can run into
the 100s for a popular title. If the title is from Penguin Random House, it
will likely cost more than $50 per copy, leading to thousands of dollars just
to keep hold times down to a few months. If the publisher is Harper Collins or
Simon and Schuster the price will be more reasonable, but we lose copies as we
check them out. For example, say we buy 15 copies that have 52 checkouts each.
As soon as we've checked those 15 copies out 52 times, we're down to 14
copies. It is very challenging and if we exerted influence, it would not be
like this. And our that our most popular device, the Kindle, is controlled by
a vendor that is fanatical about its control over the service and was dragged
kicking and screaming into working with libraries.

But physical materials still remain our most popular items. E-book sales have
stagnated at around 35% (not including Amazon's nebulous self-publishing
numbers) and we've seen the same in libraries. That makes it difficult to
shift staff. As a colleague of mine once said, "In government I can't lay
everyone off and rehire people with the right skills". Over time it will work
out, but in the short term the budgetary challenges are limiting access.

All that said, we are healthy. The library as a physical space and American
institution will be OK because people have a strong attachment to the idea and
the use case.

~~~
kasey_junk
> This make negotiation impossible. We rely on vendors like Overdrive, Baker
> and Taylor, Midwest Tape, Recorded Books, etc, to provide access to digital
> materials.

But how is that different than your previous interactions with the
wholesale/jobber market? You relied on them for rebinding, catalog record
import, fulfillment, etc. The only difference I can see is that its harder to
become competent in the delivery of e-books than it is in the delivery of
physical books because its more new.

> and hold lists can run into the 100s for a popular title

How much of that is just that demand is easier to generate with digital books.
I don't need to go to the library to get the book, there is no cost to be on a
hold list and it is delivered as soon as it is available?

> It is very challenging and if we exerted influence, it would not be like
> this

Sure, but if you could exert perfect influence you'd get the books for free ;)

Look, I'm not saying we've reached an optimal system for ebooks and libraries
but its fairly easy to understand the publishers position. Too many people get
caught up in the physical costs of books, which are not what the publisher is
worried about. They are worried about recouping all the pre-production IP
costs and marketing dollars they put into the things that _don 't_ sell. That
they've fallen back onto a model that poorly mimics physical books is probably
unfortunate, but completely unsurprising.

> All that said, we are healthy. The library as a physical space and American
> institution will be OK because people have a strong attachment to the idea
> and the use case.

Completely and totally agree and can think of few groups of people more likely
to adapt to the new information dense world than librarians. I'm much more
worried about the publishers...

~~~
JadeNB
> there is no cost to be on a hold list

What do you mean by this? At least at my library, there is no monetary cost to
be on the hold list for any resource, but you can only put a hold on a limited
number of resources; and Overdrive checkouts work just the same.

------
jackvalentine
The thing about these 'pirate libraries' that makes them seem so vital to me
is they're made up of people far more motivated to preserve and keep available
the documents than the actual copyright holders ever will be.

I draw comparisons to the vast value that was lost when Oink and What.cd were
shut down.

~~~
peatmoss
Sadly, I never even knew about What.cd when it was alive, not that I'd have
had the time and wherewithal to join. But this is the article that made me
lament its passing: [https://qz.com/840661/what-cd-is-gone-a-eulogy-for-the-
great...](https://qz.com/840661/what-cd-is-gone-a-eulogy-for-the-greatest-
music-collection-in-the-world/)

~~~
jackvalentine
Thanks for the link - the comparison to the burned Library of Alexandria was
one I hadn't thought of before.

------
joshvm
Anyone who is a student should know that most of the big publishers e.g.
Springer, Cambridge Uni. Press, etc have extensive online libraries that your
university probably subscribes to. You can go there and download complete
books, many of which would be extremely expensive to buy otherwise. A lot of
it is academic and dry, but occasionally there are some gems. It was fun to
sift through random topics that I had no idea about (like forensic pathology)
and build up a small eBook library. Best of all it's within your right as a
student to do it (your uni pays _thousands_ for these subscriptions), so
exploit it while you can.

Most of the time you have to download chapters separately, but I did write a
little script that would authenticate with Shibboleth, pull the whole book and
combine the PDFs. There was no DRM either, just a watermark with your IP or
university details to discourage sharing.

~~~
JadeNB
> You can go there and download complete books, many of which would be
> extremely expensive to buy otherwise.

As much as I hate to say something nice about one of the big publishers,
Springer even has a nice little filip: if you already have the eBook, you can
buy a physical copy for very cheap ($25, I think). I've never tried this, so I
don't know if having access through your university counts.

> Most of the time you have to download chapters separately, but I did write a
> little script that would authenticate with Shibboleth, pull the whole book
> and combine the PDFs. There was no DRM either, just a watermark with your IP
> or university details to discourage sharing.

Be careful with this, though; Cambridge, for example, bans you for a while if
you download too many files. (Obviously "too many" isn't rigorously defined,
but I hit it while downloading two many-chapter books.) I can imagine
triggering a more aggressive ban if they think you look like a robot
downloader.

~~~
joshvm
I made a list of books I liked the look of, saved it to a text and then setup
the script to run every hour ± a bit. Wasn't going to be any faster than I
could read them! I don't recall ever being rate limited so I guess the
strategy worked.

------
krylon
I really hate to be that person, and content-wise I find the article very
interesting, but:

    
    
        “The text collections were far too valuable to simply delete,” he writes, 
        and instead migrated to “closed, membership-only FTP servers.”
        More recently, though, those collections have moved online
    

So an FTP server is not "online"? I know, I know, it is a minuscule nitpick.
But for some reason this kind of thing takes my attention hostage.

And let me repeat, content-wise this is a fine and fascinating article.

~~~
PeterisP
It seems that the "moved online" part is less about FTP and more about the
"closed, membership-only" part.

Colloquially, "online" pretty much means " _available_ online", and data that
is on systems technically connected to internet but accessible only to a few
people isn't considered _available_ online.

~~~
krylon
I get that. The wording was not misleading or ambiguous.

In my job, I have to deal with network problems of various kinds from time to
time, and at the network layer, "online" has a specific meaning (Okay,
actually several, depending on context), and that was what my brain came up
with first.

Like I said, I was nitpicking.

------
tomohawk
The US government is not allowed to copyright anything, and is surely a funder
of many of these works. Contractors for the US government should similarly not
be able to copyright work done under contract. What would happen to these
copyright arguments if this became the case?

~~~
dawnerd
I tend to agree with you. Universities/Colleges that receive public money also
should be able to copyright or patent findings. If public money funds it, it
should be public domain.

~~~
lordnacho
What about some authority like a professor who writes a book about his
subject? Suppose the guy's been paid or heavily subsidised through his career.

Seems a bit unobvious to me. On the one hand, the guy's gotta bother to sit
and write a book. OTOH, his book would be worthless if he didn't have the
skills paid for by other people.

I guess what's normal is that we disregard how his expertise was funded and
just let him keep whatever he makes. After all, he doesn't have to write a
textbook.

~~~
delinka
The difference is writing as part of one's career (at the direction of
supervisors) and writing at one's own discretion.

If your school says "yo, prof! Write a book on $subject," then it's a work-
for-hire and, if public money is involved, should be public domain. If the
professor takes it upon himself to write a book, presumably on hus own time,
he then holds the copyright.

------
sl4i6j3o4i98g
Alexandra Elbakyan is a modern day hero. Her work has put more knowledge in
the hands of those who could otherwise not afford it than Sallie Mae. Cheers
to you Alex!

------
diego_moita
As long as textbooks in North America keep being so ridiculously expensive[0]
I wont take "pirate" as a valid moral argument.

[0][https://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Early-Transcendentals-
James-...](https://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Early-Transcendentals-James-
Stewart/dp/1285741552/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1500733012&sr=8-1&keywords=calculus+stewart+8th+edition)

------
Xoros
It's really complicated those copyright vs moral stuff. Remember Google have
somewhere hundreds of thousands book ready to be shipped who probably never
will be

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-t...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-
tragedy-of-google-books/523320/#?single_page=true)

Previously discussed here

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14172791](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14172791)

------
xtracto
Reminds me of Gigapedia (later named library.nu), which started as soon as
2007 and in 2012 had a huge amount of books of all kinds Nowadays Library
Genesis has a good collections, but it is mostly technical. Gigapedia was
amazing in the diversity of the topics it covered. It definitely was a loss.

~~~
JadeNB
What is the current state of such book libraries (in the sense of, "these are
some that are alive")? I can never keep track of which among LibGen, BookFi,
etc., are still alive, which are alive but not loading, which are the same
under different names, and so on.

------
contingencies
I have a large physical book library.

My 3 year old has a large pirated physical book library.

I also have a _huge_ pirated ebook library.

In the future, my child will have a copy.

Times, they are a-changin'.

~~~
stinkytaco
> My 3 year old has a large pirated physical book library.

Could you explain this? Did you steal these from someone?

~~~
contingencies
They are books produced by pirate printing factories whose major business is
making duplicates of famous children's books. Quality is great, they are
basically indistinguishable from the real thing.

~~~
stinkytaco
I don't know if I realized such a thing existed. I've seen a few print-on-
demand machines in libraries, so I guess I should have guessed, but I have
never seen such a thing before.

------
dhimmel
Nice article on the history of Shadow Libraries. They've come a long way since
their Russian roots in the 90s.

We just released a study titled "Sci-Hub provides access to nearly all
scholarly literature". Preprint at
[https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3100](https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3100).
There's an accompanying interactive browser at
[https://greenelab.github.io/scihub](https://greenelab.github.io/scihub).

Some highlights:

> As of March 2017, we find that Sci-Hub's database contains 68.9% of all 81.6
> million scholarly articles, which rises to 85.2% for those published in
> closed access journals.

> Coverage also varies by publisher, with the coverage of the largest
> publisher, Elsevier, at 97.3%.

> we estimate that over a six-month period in 2015–2016, Sci-Hub provided
> access for 99.3% of valid incoming requests.

------
supernumerary
Extant libraries I am aware of, please add you're own in replies:
[https://www.cgpeers.to/](https://www.cgpeers.to/) Computer Graphics software,
plugins, models and tutorials.

------
DonbunEf7
It's only a matter of time before somebody delivers a too-cheap-to-meter DOI-
to-PDF service.

~~~
p4bl0
That is what [https://oadoi.org/](https://oadoi.org/) and
[http://doai.io/](http://doai.io/) do. Sci-Hub can also ingest DOIs.

------
unhammer
For those times when you click a link to a paywalled article,
[http://unpaywall.org](http://unpaywall.org) is a pretty handy Firefox
extension that will redirect to a (legal) unpaywalled alternative site, if it
exists.

------
leed25d
Is there some reason why such libraries have not established themselves on the
dark web?

~~~
zrth
I2P: [http://dc-poisk.no-ip.org](http://dc-poisk.no-ip.org)

