Z-Library isn't really gone, but that maybe up to you.
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r/DataHoarderu/-Archivist (3679)

UPDATE2

TorrentFreak is covering this continuing story as new details come to light.

https://torrentfreak.com/tag/zlibrary/

UPDATE ~

We'd also like to address some of the comments here asking "how do I extract a book from this data". r/DataHoader isn't a piracy supporting subreddit, a guide on how to extract books from these archives was purposefully left out. These torrents are presented as a preservation only archive and are not meant to aid book piracy or add books to your curated collections.

Once upon a time in this sub this explanation wouldn't have been necessary. The thread will be cleaned and comment locked.

Original Thread

Millions woke up to news today that Z-Library domains have been seized, cries that z-lib is gone were heard from red core to black sky!... but that's not really the case so here is what you, a humble datahoarder can do about it.

In case you missed it a unique to z-lib (deduped against LibGen) backup was made and published by u/pilimi_anna a little over a month ago. While you did a great job with SciHub, there's still work be done to ensure the preservation of all written works and cultural heritage. So here is the 5,998,794 book 27.8TB z-lib archive for you to hold, hoard, preserve, seed and proliferate.

Related Reading

Alternative Libraries / Free eBook Hosts

Closing

Support authors you love.. But abolish the strangle hold of DRM and licensing that kills ownership, seek to squash abuse of the DMCA, move to limit copyright terms and above all aim to ensure Alexandria doesn't burn twice.

^Ukraine ^Crisis ^Megathread ^will ^replace ^this ^thread ^again ^within ^7 ^days.

Comments (230)

I spun up a container on my swarm to seed everything. I'm doing my part!

I'm doing my part!

Would you like to know more?

The only good bug is a dead bug.

I’m from Buenos Aires and I say kill ‘em all!

vos de donde bajas los libros? tenes alguna otra ademas de epublibre?

Can you elaborate what that does? I only know the term swarm in reference to seeders and leechers from the swarmcast days.

In this instance, "swarm" relates to Docker Swarm, a technology comparable to virtual machines.

Thanks, that should give me enough to go do some research on the topic :)

That's nearly 30tb of disk space. How're you managing that?

I have 276 TB of raw disk space.

Now we know who bought that decommissioned Netflix server a few weeks ago.

lol, nope, this is a RSV-4500L with a KTN-STL3

Could you share more details on your build?

Sure:

NAS Node (Fidheall):
ASRock x399 Phantom Gaming 6
Threadripper 2950X
64 GiB ECC RAM 3200MHz
1TiB NVMe (for VMs, ZFS L2ARC, etc)
512GiB NVMe bot drive for Arch
10Gbe Emulex Dual NIC
LSI SAS2308 (external drives)
LSI SAS2008 (internal drives)
10x SATA 8TiB (8 connected to the SAS2008, 2 connected directly to motherboard SATA)
4x SATA 4TiB (connected to motherboard SATA)

KTN-STL3:
15x SAS 12TiB

Docker Node (Pioban):
ASRock B450M
Ryzen 5 3600
80 GiB Non-ECC RAM 2400MHz
Intel Arc A380
256GiB NVMe (boot)

Docker Nodes (Gharadh, Foirthe, Mhoireastain, Omhaich):
4x Raspberry Pi 4 - 4GiB

I wonder if you're in a career involving any computer science, or just a random dude that enjoys this hobby on the weekends. But the world will never know.

The answer is "Yes".

Wow. Crying on my full 4TB raid

That's... HOW?? The largest disk I've ever seen is something like 12 or 16GB, so do you have a massive RAID array in your basement or something?

3 arrays, actually. A RaidZ2 of 15x 12TB, a RaidZ2 of 10x 8TB, and a Mirror of 4x 4TB.

Do... do you have pictures of this wonder?

Nothing fancy, just a RSV-4500L and a KTN-STL3 in a Startech 12U rack.

This seizure is going to get me started and you're an inspiration

by having nearly 30tb of space?

only $300 on ebay

Where can I learn to do what you do?

There are plenty of online resources but what your probably after is searching for Docker and Kubernetes. They’re two popular products but are still just the tip of the iceberg. Read around these or containerisation in general and you’ll be well on your way. Enjoy the rabbit hole.

Just purchased 32 TB of drives and will get started with the dl as soon as it arrives. Bless the folks who backed all this up and made it available! Cheers

Would you mind sharing your compose file?

It's just a regular old qbittorrent instance that I dropped all of the .torrent files into.

Care to share the Dockerfile?

It's just a qBittorrent image that I started up and added the torrents to.

Have ya not realized that people don’t know what the heck Docker is? Or I suppose they can just google it, right, the answer to everything- that’s where all the knowledge in the lib repo came from I hear.

Where do you you seed from? The United States?

Everything is VPN'd intentionally, so in effect I'm not really sure where I'm seeding from. I'd have to go look.

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how do you get the books from a library to calibre?

https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/

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Any link to where the weeks part is mentioned?

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Where the fuck do I get a 30 TB external HD?

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how much do they cost normally? Not sure if the ones on amazon are a scam since $100 for 14tb doesn't seem legit

https://diskprices.com/

Amazon

Gotta wait till Black Friday to pick up those 18TB drives, anything higher than 18TB doesn’t have a good $/TB ratio

its time to build a decentralized DNS system, fuck the current system.

https://libgen.fun/ was de-centralized, re-coded, and re-designed from the ground up using and is run by libgen's original creator, bookwarrior. Join his forum and ask how you can help.

De-centralized DNS, de-centralized hosting, and de-centralized databases. That's the key to the survival of a universal free library for the ages.

Thanks to the IPFS push from earlier years libgen.rs is also running its hosting on IPFS mainly, as well. It all just kind of happened without a hiccup. Visit freeread.org to learn more.

Have you seen this?

Or this?

Some specifics you might find interesting. You'll need to read the descriptions, there's a lot there and not all of it's relevant. The stuff I think you might find interesting are decentralized networks that are based on distributed computing.

There's several decentralized file systems. I think most are based on block-chain technology that uses the same protocols that enable cryptocurrencies as a way to authenticate URLs in those types of networks.

The main drawback to those for purposes of data preservation is that for anything to stay alive there has to be people looking to access it.

At least one of those systems when you run it on a PC you have to devote a certain amount of space, some of which will store some encrypted files that are chunks (similar to chunks of a .torrent) of other people's files, website or whatever they're doing so that in order to access the network you're providing some storage space in exchange. The more popular any content is, the more duplicate chunks are distributed throughout the network.

Some of this stuff is approaching the point of critical mass for it to be usable for data storage and preservation.

There are currently 2 populair technologies (other than torrents) that do this.

IPFS normally works by pins where a user can pin a file or folder to "seed" that until they unpin it. It is accessible through http by gateways which are just protocol translators. There is also blockchain technology added on this called filecoin where you can pay for a contract and a swarm of "seeds" will keep it up for you for the specified amount of time.

There is also Sia which was blockchain based from the beginning this means that uploading or downloading is not free. Files can be accessible trough portals but these portals need Siacoin to serve these. On the other hand tno put files in the network you also need a contract. This network might be better in the long term for file preservation while IPFS is more akin to a CDN.

To host something like this I would use IPFS just like the wikipedia mirror from 2017 but only for the backend where files are served trough gateways to the public but advanced users can seed and leech the files directly trough their own clients.

There's a bunch of stuff that I haven't researched yet. Personally I haven't really even scratched the surface but I can see there's a lot of different kinds of projects that have all kinds of potential for various purposes, defeating censorship by governments as well as by public hysteria and potentially addressing different areas of widespread concern.

That's great, need to carefully share the knowledge with people who are privacy conscious to help grow awareness.

Some of the stuff is applicable to privacy but to me the big thing is decentralization makes a truly free internet possible, as there's no way to take a distributed file system down without dismantling the whole internet.

This already exists, we just need a few major players like Cloudflare or something to start supporting them. Namecoin, Ethereum ENS, and IPFS all do decentralized and secure name registry mapping.

I always thought that hosting stuff like this on TLDs that can be controlled by governments that would do something like this is a bad idea

I'm surprised they didn't just stick with an onion service. A very large number of titles were unavailable on the clearnet due to DMCA takedowns already, the onion service was pretty much the only reliable way to access everything.

Most people aren't going to downlaod the tor browser just for this, because every reference to the dark web in popular media is about the horrors of it, only criminals use it, etc.

This is sad but we will come back stronger

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Supergoo.

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Dotle imploration. Switchbac suboptimally?

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Sometimes, people use Z-Library for eye-patch way, as the books are not affordable.

I will give example. 50 USD book is just a few days saving for USA and most western countries. But it's half of month salary(even more in some places). And even if saved, it will most likely one or two buys in a year, as there are other bills and cost of family, to take care of first.

Until the day of universal income or under one world gov system(which will never happen, even if Mars is terraformed and having 2 worlds for humanity to live), sites like Z-Library are quite important. And not to be bragged on sites like TikTok with hashtags, for begging of a few likes(even if it's millions, that's a disgrace).

Yes, completely true, which is why piracy is big in 3rd world countries and also one of the reasons why it's hard to make a living as a writer on those places. I don't know where z- library started but my question is, why does the US decide its the one who controls the world's internet? If it's protecting rights in the US, then shouldn't they just block non-US URLs?

I sometimes think the Berne Convention is the closest thing we've got to a dystopic "One World Government", allowing near-global control over what information we can and cannot access. Yeah, it's kind of hyperbolic given it doesn't block your own expression of ideas, but I just don't like how complete the country-coverage map is.

As for the Internet's DNS system, it's largely controlled by the US because it was invented there. ICANN was literally under the control of the US government until 2016, and it's still headquartered in the US so I expect there's still plenty of influence.

Z Library got ruined by people bragging about getting free books on Tic Tok so much it strated trending. Instead of being like the rest of us (most of us) & just realizing this is really helpful, useful site & I'll only tell very few people about my find & not act like I was the one that invented the site or act like I was the first to find it. There r Idiots bragging so much it was trending & the law HAD TO bust it, even tho they also downloaded books from Z-Library.

Some people need to learn how to keep thier big, fat mouths shut. Making Tic-Tok videos about how great they were for piracy, beating about it The FBI should bust the people who made it trend since they were doing illegal shut too. But nah only Z library will be hit and the rest of us will feel the punishment of the action of idiots with no brains.

Thanks for this.

BTW I've never seen anyone else reference the Library of Alexandria at all, nor the tragedy that occurred there.

It is unknown precisely how many such scrolls were housed at any given time, but estimates range from 40,000 to 400,000 at its height.

We aren't sure even the magnitude of its size.

Ptolemy VIII Physcon's expulsion of the scholars from Alexandria brought about a shift in the history of Hellenistic scholarship. The scholars who had studied at the Library of Alexandria and their students continued to conduct research and write treatises, but most of them no longer did so in association with the Library

It was losing popularity anyway.

Scholars have interpreted Cassius Dio's wording to indicate that the fire did not actually destroy the entire Library itself, but rather only a warehouse located near the docks being used by the Library to house scrolls. Whatever devastation Caesar's fire may have caused, the Library was evidently not completely destroyed. The geographer Strabo (c. 63 BC–c. 24 AD) mentions visiting the Mouseion, the larger research institution to which the Library was attached, in around 20 BC, several decades after Caesar's fire, indicating that it either survived the fire or was rebuilt soon afterwards. Nonetheless, Strabo's manner of talking about the Mouseion shows that it was nowhere near as prestigious as it had been a few centuries prior. Despite mentioning the Mouseion, Strabo does not mention the Library separately, perhaps indicating that it had been so drastically reduced in stature and significance that Strabo felt it did not warrant separate mention.

It burned to some extent but it wasn't some humanitarian tragedy.

So tldr the pop culture term has more significance than the actual event itself.

Ah, I was under the impression nearly all of it was lost.

Still the symbolism has value IMO. That being said we've lost a lot of knowledge, especially technical knowledge in recent times just for no other reason that there's a consensus that a particular way of doing something is obsolete when something new comes along.

For instance there's probably not many guys around these days that can do spark testing of steels competently enough to be useful because they have expensive machines to do that now . Most people , even guys that are involved in stuff where that could come in handy probably never have heard of it.

Spark testing is the art/science of determining what particular alloy you might have by observing the kind of sparks thrown from grinding it, how long the are before bursting into multiples, colors, etc.

As most technology of all kinds is based on knowledge of related stuff as well as older ways of doing things. (we tend to think of "tech" as being about electronics but it's really about nearly everything we do) it's often useful to be able to reference some of the older ways in order to develop new ways or solve problems at times.

Remember when people were parroting “the burning of the library held humanity back for hundreds of years! Imagine where we’d be now!”

That's more dark ages than anything else.

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What . Only 6 million books are archived . I thought there was 80 million book on Z Library

It's only books you came fine in libgen already

Nothing would come even close Z Library. People keep suggesting me multiple well known free websites but non of them have all books available & their search engine is trash. They mostly use internet crawlers & have >10M books & when you search a book by name they use the keyword to find trash files .

It's the books that were on zlib that you can't find on Libgen.

r/Ebook_Resources is a subreddit that aggregates ebooks resources from all over the internet. There are guides on everything from finding ebooks, to getting around DRM and paywalls, to which are the best torrenting sites.
The stickied post there also has a link for a custom search engine for ebooks: https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=c46414ccb6a943e39

Considering the robustness of libgen, ideally these 5,997,794 articles be included there as well.

There is a separate set of torrents for libgen

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How do you people manage to download 27tb? Storage isn’t an issue with 12tb hdds being available but download speeds would cause this to take years

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I knew I should have cloned this

Reportedly, Z-Libary hosted 220 TB.

Bless all of you degenerates

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They can never kill mirc if you guys need books asap

How come Z-Libary is "was" on Wikiepdia?

u/pilimi_anna What format are the files in the torrents? They don't appear to even have a file extension, so I'm not sure how one would use or mirror them.

Also since this collection is de-duped against LibGen and one other source, do you know where I could access the torrents for the other sources? I want to mirror these.

The extension can be found in the metadata database, which is in one of the torrents. Libgen torrents can be found here https://libgen.gs/torrents/ and in some more places, but that is a good start.

Should I make tool to change index and files into one properly name or such tool is already comming?

Feel free to do that if you want! We're not working on that.

Most people who want to download individual books will likely do so from Z-Library directly, or from the searchable mirror that we're currently setting up.

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whats their fkn problem

They like money and hate literature.

Publishing companies acting like any other copyright management company ala late stage capitalism.

This is very very early stage capitalism though. Literally the problem is applying anachronistic ideas about ownership rights over scarce physical goods from the year 1600 to non-scarce data in 2022.

Why are you being downvoted?

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Thanks for this!

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Nice

Save

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When we say one torrent is de-duped against the other collection, how then would I archive all the books and how much space would that take up?

There are torrents of LibGen and SciHub, there are people (read the thread/links) working on putting everything in one place and deduping but for reasons like legal attacks, funding and time (this is someones spare time hobby, not job) this wont happen overnight.

Everything in one place deduped is around 100T (includes sci articles)

Another problem in all of this is preservation vs consumption, the archive in this thread isn't for the average books lovers consumption hence there being no guide presented here on how to pull out for example 10 books you're looking for, while all the data you need to do so is included this aims to be a preservation archive not you're personal library.

I didn’t see the torrents for LibGen and SciHub, would you have the links?

I'm aware it's not meant to be just my personal library.

I’ll have to check these other sites out.

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Thanks