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In-depth article about how shadow library sites like LibGen came to be and why they matter.
Breaks down the history and shows how helpful LibGen is for regular folks and us amateur scientists who just want to learn without hitting paywalls.
this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
68 points (93.6% liked)
Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Here’s what I see as a consequence of free educational book distribution: within decades, generations of people everywhere in the world will grow up with access to the best scientific texts of all time. […] [T]he quality and accessibility of education to the poor will grow dramatically too. Frankly, I see this as the only way to naturally improve mankind: we need to make all the information available to them at any time.—Anonymous administrator of the Russian shadow library site Library Genesis (LG), explaining its raison d’être
Free flow of knowledge is absolutely essential. Of all the things that should be accessible knowledge and the opportunity for every person to realize their full potential should be a must.
Free flow of knowledge is absolutely essential. Of all the things that should be accessible knowledge and the opportunity for every person to realize their full potential should be a must.
I totally agree. I often think about self-taught scientists like Michael Faraday or Mary Anning and what they’d say about how hard it is to access knowledge today, even with all the tech we have. Back in the 1800s, they had to hunt down books, write letters to experts, and dig through whatever scraps of info they could find. Now we’ve got the internet, but somehow it’s still locked behind paywalls and profiteers trying to gatekeep learning.
Now we’ve got the internet, but somehow it’s still locked behind paywalls and profiteers trying to gatekeep learning.
Pure Human Greed
Yep! That's why projects like this are so essential.
Wtf is that image?
Brah, think of it as millions of data-drenched pages, packed with high-voltage scholarly juice, swirl through the wires like ghost smoke, and then vanishing into the hidden vaults of a shadow library buried deep in the darkweb. A digital rebel bunker, ducking the sweaty claws of greedy suits who’d sell knowledge by the ounce if they could!
OR just some random AI image the author of the piece picked? I don't know.
It’s obviously AI generated, but it’s not a library. It’s a coliseum. Very strange choice.
Probably a representation of the legend of the burning of the Library of Alexandria, when many ancient works were presumed lost forever.
More images: https://www.qwant.com/?client=ext-firefox-sb&q=library+of+alexandria+burning&t=images&origin=suggest
Oh good catch!
It is a panopticon
Agreed. Honestly, it didn't even really need a pic.
And the article is full of AI slop too
I thought the article was pretty decent. I wouldn't call it "slop." I didn't write it so I don't have any feedback on if it's ai or not.
The actual article is real but the art and abstract are ai. I don’t get this site’s strategy
But to be fair, I don't really pay attention to the art or the abstract. It's the article that I read. So all good.
All ~~Cops~~ AI Are ~~Bastards~~ Slop
Surprisingly edited by MIT press. It was the MIT police which referred Aaron Swartz to federal prosecutors for piracy. He was hounded to death.
Why do we need library genesis when we already have https://libraryofbabel.info/
/s
I guess I'm out of the loop. Can you explain what that site is? Cuz I had a look around and still didn't know the purpose.
It contains every combination of the english alphabet characters possible.
So you can find a lot of junk, but also everything that has ever been said or written and everything that ever will be said or written in the future.
It may be disjointed, but it's there, every passage of every book.
And everything has it's special place that always stays the same. The way it is generated and searchable is really interesting.
If you go to that hexagon, that wall, that shelf, that book and that page - you will find your own comment. (And you will also find it in millions of other pages surrounded by different variations of characters).
You might click around randomly and find every passage from the bible. But also every passage from the bible where the word "Jesus" is replaced with your own name... etc. there are only finite possibilities of combinations of characters.
Hope that makes sense.
Love that site. Just now I clicked on a random page and got something with "robux" in the top line, kek
Thank you. I just finished up researching it since I didn't now what it was. And I never heard of the project before, so very cool little thought experiment!
Caution: Don't put in your date of death. I did. I typed in "The date of <UniveralMonk's> death is" and then took the gibberish word that was after that and put into ai to turn it into a date using numbers of alphabet, etc.
My death is set for May 10, 2025.
I was very unhappy with this knowledge. Then realized that every possible variation of the wrong date (include every single date in the world ever) would be listed as well as a correct one. So whew! (I hope!)
Haha thats a funny thing, I strongly hope to see you around in a month!
I have learned about the library of babel project from a vsauce video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDrBIKOR01c (starting at around 17:00)
Haha thats a funny thing, I strongly hope to see you around in a month!
Thanks. If I die, I'll still be sure to shitpost from wherever I am. I promise!