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Z-Library Helps Students to Overcome Academic Poverty, Study Finds

(torrentfreak.com)
419 points hn_acker | 3 comments | 20 Nov 24 23:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.717s | source
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bastard_op ◴[21 Nov 24 01:17 UTC] No.42200020[source]▶
Some 28 years ago I taught myself everything could get/find from graphic design, basic development, server administration, etc, all downloading commercial warez over dial-up with AOL and Usenet. I didn't need a class or subscriptions, with every software and book I could have wanted, I had the best lab in the world with any software available I could want with piracy.

Fast forward 30 years now it's mostly the same as it was, only open source replaced all the commercial, and little has changed that I can still get the rest too. You can pay as much or little as you want in life if you know how.

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jjtheblunt[dead post] ◴[21 Nov 24 01:26 UTC] No.42200079[source]▶
[flagged]
LocalH ◴[21 Nov 24 02:22 UTC] No.42200443[source]▶
Piracy isn't stealing. Legally or morally.

You know what is stealing? The heavily lengthened copyright term. Every day that has been and will be added to that, is a day that was stolen from the public ownership of the work, as prescribed in copyright law.

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1. PrismCrystal ◴[21 Nov 24 10:08 UTC] No.42202730[source]▶
I have never been sympathetic to the notion that copyright has just been extended too long. Copyright itself is the problem. For example, for an academic from a poor region trying to keep up with publications in his field, even the short length of copyright set out by the American Founding Fathers, is too long.
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2. jjtheblunt ◴[21 Nov 24 16:39 UTC] No.42206050[source]▶
It predates America:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#History

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3. PrismCrystal ◴[21 Nov 24 17:03 UTC] No.42206318[source]▶
Obviously. But HN is American-dominated, and the Copyright Clause in the Constitution and the original length of 14 years, are what most people are likely to think of when it is mentioned that copyright used to be a short monopoly to spur the arts and sciences. In modern scholarship, where progress is continual and scholars hail from countries that have differing degrees of access to paid resources, any monopoly for any length of time is harmful.