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

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.

It isn’t stealing or piracy. Stealing involves taking a resource, which makes it unavailable to others and causes the legitimate owner to have one fewer of the thing.

Piracy is stealing, typically on boats, with a threat of violence involved.

This is unauthorized copying. It does devalue the work of the copyright holder. It is illegal in many jurisdictions. It costs the legitimate owner something, the opportunity of a sale, but it doesn’t actually cause the legitimate owner to have fewer copies of the thing to sell.

If the perpetrator was some kid with no money, the opportunity denied to the copyright owner was pretty minimal. I mean we should be honest about it, unauthorized copying is bad. But it is much less bad than stealing and it is not anywhere near piracy (applying the name piracy to unauthorized copying was some over-dramatic silly nonsense).

If unauthorized copying is akin to preventing a potential sale then using a gym for an authorized/non paid amount of time to try the gym without paying is not stealing.

Doubt anyone would be put into jail for doing that. At worst if done maliciously then they might be asked to leave or trespassed.

Creator of the thing sets the terms. People have the ability to not buy it if they do not like the terms. But they do not have the right to alter the terms via stealing.

> If unauthorized copying is akin to preventing a potential sale then using a gym for an authorized/non paid amount of time to try the gym without paying is not stealing.

Well using a gym for free isn’t stealing either. Although the analogy is flawed because a gym has a limited capacity so you could take up the space of legitimate customers, which you don’t do when torrenting copyrighted stuff.

> Creator of the thing sets the terms. People have the ability to not buy it if they do not like the terms. But they do not have the right to alter the terms via stealing.

No, creators can’t just redefine words. It’s not stealing, because you’re not taking something away from someone.

Using a gym for free is a theft of services. All states have a law like this. For example, Florida Statutes § 812.014.

Pirating is theft.

I wouldn't really call theft of services "stealing", but I'm not a native speaker. Maybe that's something people say.

> Pirating is theft.

Do you mean copyright violations or ship piracy?

I don't see how this follows, because torrenting a movie doesn't take a service from the movie right holder. They wouldn't even notice if they wouldn't actively monitor torrent users. Theft of service is a crime because it causes unpaid work for the service provider, right? That's why I said the gym analogy doesn't apply here.

Theft of services isn't just about causing unpaid work; it involves intentionally depriving a provider of the rightful compensation for their services.

Both cases are equal in principle.

Theft of IP falls under a different law in the US than theft of something like gym services.

> Theft of IP falls under a different law in the US than theft of something like gym services.

Yeah, you know why? It’s not theft, it’s called copyright infringement.

Agree, but it causes economic harm, it’s a misuse of legal rights, and breach of the IP holders agreement.

Creators have a right to protect their control and revenue streams.

That's disputable by a strict reading of the original copyright law, before it was perverted by those who would vacuum up "IP" solely for the control and for potential profit.

Copyright is ultimately intended "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries". Limited times. "75 years past the author's death" is not in any practical way limited, when none of the people who were alive during or in the years postceding the author may access what should be, at that point, their rightfully publicly owned work. Current copyright terms hinder the progress of human knowledge and creativity. It incentivizes people who get lucky and create the next huge hit, to rest on their laurels for the rest of their life, getting paid repeatedly for the same work, with no incentive to create anything new. At the same time, those who would make a transformative use of a work (that isn't otherwise a fair use) are rebuked.

14+14 is all we need. Anything else is rent-seeking.

Don't even get me started on those in the world who would support perpetual copyright (not that you espoused that opinion, but many do). Fortunately, that one would require a constitutional amendment in the US to be legal.

The dirtiest tactic used in the copyright push was the Berne Convention. It allows countries to throw their hands up and say "sorry, we can't do anything, we have to harmonize the copyright terms", thus making a treaty that effectively supercedes various national constitutions.