Some Libgen links can’t be reached after broad takedown order.

On Thursday, some links to the notorious shadow library Library Genesis (Libgen) couldn’t be reached after a US district court judge, Colleen McMahon, ordered what TorrentFreak called “one of the broadest anti-piracy injunctions” ever issued by a US court.

In her order, McMahon sided with textbook publishers who accused Libgen of willful copyright infringement after Libgen completely ignored their complaint.

To compensate rightsholders, McMahon ordered Libgen to pay $30 million, but because nobody knows who runs the shadow library, it seems unlikely that publishers will be paid any time soon, if ever.

    • @DaneGerous
      1•10 minutes ago

      And how did they prove that anyone was served?

    • @linearchaosEnglish
      32•5 hours ago

      The index is distributed. The files are hosted in multiple places. Historically, some of the storage spots have been compromised web servers. There are copies in ipfs.

      I get the feeling it’s maintained by a collective. No idea how they coordinate content acquisition or update indexes. It’s pretty well updated.

  • barnaclebutt
    55•9 hours ago

    Sometimes there’s a positive story that just makes your day. I bet those lawyers were expensive!

      • @[email protected]English
        2•35 minutes ago

        I cannot count the times that I have gone through the legitimate path to read a paper, by clicking “AcCeS tHiS pApEr ThRoUgH yOuR iNsTItUtIoN” and I log in through my university, faffing with 2FA, only to be told “nah, you don’t have access”. I just go straight to scihub nowadays.

  • @aeronmelon
    16•9 hours ago

    Pirates: “Arr, hehe, yeah, we’ll send this right up the yardarm for ye.”