SCI-HUB d/b/a WWW.SCI-HUB.ORG, THE LIBRARY GENESIS PROJECT d/b/a LIBGEN.ORG, ALEXANDRA ELBAKYAN, JOHN DOES 1-99,
Defendants.
Plaintiffs Elsevier Inc, Elsevier B.V., and Elsevier Ltd. (collectively “Elsevier”),
by their attorneys DeVore & DeMarco LLP, for their complaint against www.scihub.org,
www.libgen.org, Alexandra Elbakyan, and John Does 1-99 (collectively the “Defendants”),
allege as follows:
NATURE OF THE ACTION
1. This is a civil action seeking damages and injunctive relief for: (1) copyright infringement under the copyright laws of the United States (17 U.S.C. § 101 et seq.); and (2) violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18.U.S.C. § 1030, based upon Defendants’ unlawful access to, use, reproduction, and distribution of Elsevier’s copyrighted works. Defendants’ actions in this regard have caused and continue to cause irreparable injury to Elsevier and its publishing partners (including scholarly societies) for which it publishes certain journals.
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PARTIES
2. Plaintiff Elsevier Inc. is a corporation organized under the laws of Delaware, with its principal place of business at 360 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10010.
3. Plaintiff Elsevier B.V. is a corporation organized under the laws of the Netherlands, with its principal place of business at Radarweg 29, Amsterdam, 1043 NX, Netherlands.
4. Plaintiff Elsevier Ltd. is a corporation organized under the laws of the United Kingdom, with its principal place of business at 125 London Wall, EC2Y 5AS United Kingdom.
5. Upon information and belief, Defendant Sci-Hub is an individual or organization engaged in the operation of the website accessible at the URL “www.sci-hub.org,” and related subdomains, including but not limited to the subdomain “www.sciencedirect.com.sci-hub.org,”
www.elsevier.com.sci-hub.org,” “store.elsevier.com.sci-hub.org,” and various subdomains
incorporating the company and product names of other major global publishers (collectively with www.sci-hub.org the “Sci-Hub Website”). The sci-hub.org domain name is registered by
“Fundacion Private Whois,” located in Panama City, Panama, to an unknown registrant. As of
the date of this filing, the Sci-Hub Website is assigned the IP address 31.184.194.81. This IP address is part of a range of IP addresses assigned to Petersburg Internet Network Ltd., a webhosting company located in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
6. Upon information and belief, Defendant Library Genesis Project is an organization which operates an online repository of copyrighted materials accessible through the website located at the URL “libgen.org” as well as a number of other “mirror” websites
(collectively the “Libgen Domains”). The libgen.org domain is registered by “Whois Privacy
Corp.,” located at Ocean Centre, Montagu Foreshore, East Bay Street, Nassau, New Providence,
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Bahamas, to an unknown registrant. As of the date of this filing, libgen.org is assigned the IP address 93.174.95.71. This IP address is part of a range of IP addresses assigned to Ecatel Ltd., a web-hosting company located in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
7. The Libgen Domains include “elibgen.org,” “libgen.info,” “lib.estrorecollege.org,” and “bookfi.org.”
8. Upon information and belief, Defendant Alexandra Elbakyan is the principal owner and/or operator of Sci-Hub. Upon information and belief, Elbakyan is a resident of Almaty, Kazakhstan.
9. Elsevier is unaware of the true names and capacities of the individuals named as Does 1-99 in this Complaint (together with Alexandra Elbakyan, the “Individual Defendants”),
and their residence and citizenship is also unknown. Elsevier will amend its Complaint to allege the names, capacities, residence and citizenship of the Doe Defendants when their identities are learned.
10. Upon information and belief, the Individual Defendants are the owners and operators of numerous of websites, including Sci-Hub and the websites located at the various
Libgen Domains, and a number of e-mail addresses and accounts at issue in this case.
11. The Individual Defendants have participated, exercised control over, and benefited from the infringing conduct described herein, which has resulted in substantial harm to
the Plaintiffs.
JURISDICTION AND VENUE
12. This is a civil action arising from the Defendants’ violations of the copyright laws of the United States (17 U.S.C. § 101 et seq.) and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”),
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18.U.S.C. § 1030. Therefore, the Court has subject matter jurisdiction over this action pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1331.
13. Upon information and belief, the Individual Defendants own and operate computers and Internet websites and engage in conduct that injures Plaintiff in this district, while
also utilizing instrumentalities located in the Southern District of New York to carry out the acts complained of herein.
14. Defendants have affirmatively directed actions at the Southern District of New York by utilizing computer servers located in the District without authorization and by
unlawfully obtaining access credentials belonging to individuals and entities located in the
District, in order to unlawfully access, copy, and distribute Elsevier's copyrighted materials
which are stored on Elsevier’s ScienceDirect platform.
15.
Defendants have committed the acts complained of herein through unauthorized
access to Plaintiffs’ copyrighted materials which are stored and maintained on computer servers
located in the Southern District of New York.
16.
Defendants have undertaken the acts complained of herein with knowledge that
such acts would cause harm to Plaintiffs and their customers in both the Southern District of
New York and elsewhere. Defendants have caused the Plaintiff injury while deriving revenue
from interstate or international commerce by committing the acts complained of herein.
Therefore, this Court has personal jurisdiction over Defendants.
17.
Venue in this District is proper under 28 U.S.C. § 1391(b) because a substantial
part of the events giving rise to Plaintiffs’ claims occurred in this District and because the
property that is the subject of Plaintiffs’ claims is situated in this District.
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FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS
Elsevier’s Copyrights in Publications on ScienceDirect
18.
Elsevier is a world leading provider of professional information solutions in the
Science, Medical, and Health sectors. Elsevier publishes, markets, sells, and licenses academic
textbooks, journals, and examinations in the fields of science, medicine, and health. The
majority of Elsevier’s institutional customers are universities, governmental entities, educational
institutions, and hospitals that purchase physical and electronic copies of Elsevier’s products and
access to Elsevier’s digital libraries. Elsevier distributes its scientific journal articles and book
chapters electronically via its proprietary subscription database “ScienceDirect”
(www.sciencedirect.com). In most cases, Elsevier holds the copyright and/or exclusive
distribution rights to the works available through ScienceDirect. In addition, Elsevier holds
trademark rights in “Elsevier,” “ScienceDirect,” and several other related trade names.
19.
The ScienceDirect database is home to almost one-quarter of the world's peer-
reviewed, full-text scientific, technical and medical content. The ScienceDirect service features
sophisticated search and retrieval tools for students and professionals which facilitates access to
over 10 million copyrighted publications. More than 15 million researchers, health care
professionals, teachers, students, and information professionals around the globe rely on
ScienceDirect as a trusted source of nearly 2,500 journals and more than 26,000 book titles.
20.
Authorized users are provided access to the ScienceDirect platform by way of
non-exclusive, non-transferable subscriptions between Elsevier and its institutional customers.
According to the terms and conditions of these subscriptions, authorized users of ScienceDirect
must be users affiliated with the subscriber (e.g., full-time and part-time students, faculty, staff
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and researchers of subscriber universities and individuals using computer terminals within the
library facilities at the subscriber for personal research, education or other non-corporate use.)
21.
A substantial portion of American research universities maintain active
subscriptions to ScienceDirect. These subscriptions, under license, allow the universities to
provide their faculty and students access to the copyrighted works within the ScienceDirect
database.
22.
Elsevier stores and maintains the copyrighted material available in ScienceDirect
on servers owned and operated by a third party whose servers are located in the Southern District
of New York and elsewhere. In order to optimize performance, these third-party servers
collectively operate as a distributed network which serves cached copies of Elsevier’s
copyrighted materials by way of particular servers that are geographically close to the user. For
example, a user that accesses ScienceDirect from a University located in the Southern District of
New York will likely be served that content from a server physically located in the District.
Authentication of Authorized University ScienceDirect Users
23.
Elsevier maintains the integrity and security of the copyrighted works accessible
on ScienceDirect by allowing only authenticated users access to the platform. Elsevier
authenticates educational users who access ScienceDirect through their affiliated university’s
subscription by verifying that they are able to access ScienceDirect from a computer system or
network previously identified as belonging to a subscribing university.
24.
Elsevier does not track individual educational users’ access to ScienceDirect.
Instead, Elsevier verifies only that the user has authenticated access to a subscribing university.
25.
Once an educational user authenticates his computer with ScienceDirect on a
university network, that computer is permitted access to ScienceDirect for a limited amount of
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time without re-authenticating. For example, a student could access ScienceDirect from their
laptop while sitting in a university library, then continue to access ScienceDirect using that
laptop from their dorm room later that day. After a specified period of time has passed, however,
a user will have to re-authenticate his or her computer’s access to ScienceDirect by connecting to
the platform through a university network.
26.
As a matter of practice, educational users access university networks, and thereby
authenticate their computers with ScienceDirect, primarily through one of two methods. First,
the user may be physically connected to a university network, for example by taking their
computer to the university’s library. Second, the user may connect remotely to the university’s
network using a proxy connection. Universities offer proxy connections to their students and
faculty so that those users may access university computing resources – including access to
research databases such as ScienceDirect – from remote locations which are unaffiliated with the
university. This practice facilitates the use of ScienceDirect by students and faculty while they
are at home, travelling, or otherwise off-campus.
Defendants’ Unauthorized Access to University Proxy Networks to Facilitate Copyright
Infringement
27.
Upon information and belief, Defendants are reproducing and distributing
unauthorized copies of Elsevier’s copyrighted materials, unlawfully obtained from
ScienceDirect, through Sci-Hub and through various websites affiliated with the Library Genesis
Project. Specifically, Defendants utilize their websites located at sci-hub.org and at the Libgen
Domains to operate an international network of piracy and copyright infringement by
circumventing legal and authorized means of access to the ScienceDirect database. Defendants’
piracy is supported by the persistent intrusion and unauthorized access to the computer networks
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of Elsevier and its institutional subscribers, including universities located in the Southern District
of New York.
28.
Upon information and belief, Defendants have unlawfully obtained and continue
to unlawfully obtain student or faculty access credentials which permit proxy connections to
universities which subscribe to ScienceDirect, and use these credentials to gain unauthorized
access to ScienceDirect.
29.
Upon information and belief, Defendants have used and continue to use such
access credentials to authenticate access to ScienceDirect and, subsequently, to obtain
copyrighted scientific journal articles therefrom without valid authorization.
30.
The Sci-Hub website requires user interaction in order to facilitate its illegal
copyright infringement scheme. Specifically, before a Sci-Hub user can obtain access to
copyrighted scholarly journals, articles, and books that are maintained by ScienceDirect, he must
first perform a search on the Sci-Hub page. A Sci-Hub user may search for content using either
(a) a general keyword-based search, or (b) a journal, article or book identifier (such as a Digital
Object Identifier, PubMed Identifier, or the source URL).
31.
When a user performs a keyword search on Sci-Hub, the website returns a proxied
version of search results from the Google Scholar search database. 1 When a user selects one of
the search results, if the requested content is not available from the Library Genesis Project, SciHub unlawfully retrieves the content from ScienceDirect using the access previously obtained.
Sci-Hub then provides a copy of that article to the requesting user, typically in PDF format. If,
however, the requested content can be found in the Library Genesis Project repository, upon
1
Google Scholar provides its users the capability to search for scholarly literature, but does not provide the
full text of copyrighted scientific journal articles accessible through paid subscription services such as
ScienceDirect. Instead, Google Scholar provides bibliographic information concerning such articles along with a
link to the platform through which the article may be purchased or accessed by a subscriber.
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information and belief, Sci-Hub obtains the content from the Library Genesis Project repository
and provides that content to the user.
32.
When a user searches on Sci-Hub for an article available on ScienceDirect using a
journal or article identifier, the user is redirected to a proxied version of the ScienceDirect page
where the user can download the requested article at no cost. Upon information and belief, SciHub facilitates this infringing conduct by using unlawfully-obtained access credentials to
university proxy servers to establish remote access to ScienceDirect through those proxy servers.
If, however, the requested content can be found in the Library Genesis Project repository, upon
information and belief, Sci-Hub obtains the content from it and provides it to the user.
33.
Upon information and belief, Sci-Hub engages in no other activity other than the
illegal reproduction and distribution of digital copies of Elsevier’s copyrighted works and the
copyrighted works of other publishers, and the encouragement, inducement, and material
contribution to the infringement of the copyrights of those works by third parties – i.e., the users
of the Sci-Hub website.
34.
Upon information and belief, in addition to the blatant and rampant infringement
of Elsevier’s copyrights as described above, the Defendants have also used the Sci-Hub website
to earn revenue from the piracy of copyrighted materials from ScienceDirect. Sci-Hub has at
various times accepted funds through a variety of payment processors, including PayPal,
Yandex, WebMoney, QiQi, and Bitcoin.
Sci-Hub’s Use of the Library Genesis Project as a Repository for Unlawfully-Obtained
Scientific Journal Articles and Books
35.
Upon information and belief, when Sci-Hub pirates and downloads an article from
ScienceDirect in response to a user request, in addition to providing a copy of that article to that
user, Sci-Hub also provides a duplicate copy to the Library Genesis Project, which stores the
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article in a database accessible through the Internet. Upon information and belief, the Library
Genesis Project is designed to be a permanent repository of this and other illegally obtained
content.
36.
Upon information and belief, in the event that a Sci-Hub user requests an article
which has already been provided to the Library Genesis Project, Sci-Hub may provide that user
access to a copy provided by the Library Genesis Project rather than re-download an additional
copy of the article from ScienceDirect. As a result, Defendants Sci-Hub and Library Genesis
Project act in concert to engage in a scheme designed to facilitate the unauthorized access to and
wholesale distribution of Elsevier’s copyrighted works legitimately available on the
ScienceDirect platform.
The Library Genesis Project’s Unlawful Distribution of Plaintiff’s Copyrighted Works
37.
Access to the Library Genesis Project’s repository is facilitated by the website
“libgen.org,” which provides its users the ability to search, download content from, and upload
content to, the repository. The main page of libgen.org allows its users to perform searches in
various categories, including “LibGen (Sci-Tech),” and “Scientific articles.” In addition to
searching by keyword, users may also search for specific content by various other fields,
including title, author, periodical, publisher, or ISBN or DOI number.
38.
The libgen.org website indicates that the Library Genesis Project repository
contains approximately 1 million “Sci-Tech” documents and 40 million scientific articles. Upon
information and belief, the large majority of these works is subject to copyright protection and is
being distributed through the Library Genesis Project without the permission of the applicable
rights-holder. Upon information and belief, the Library Genesis Project serves primarily, if not
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exclusively, as a scheme to violate the intellectual property rights of the owners of millions of
copyrighted works.
39.
Upon information and belief, Elsevier owns the copyrights in a substantial
number of copyrighted materials made available for distribution through the Library Genesis
Project. Elsevier has not authorized the Library Genesis Project or any of the Defendants to
copy, display, or distribute through any of the complained of websites any of the content stored
on ScienceDirect to which it holds the copyright. Among the works infringed by the Library
Genesis Project are the “Guyton and Hall Textbook of Medical Physiology,” and the article “The
Varus Ankle and Instability” (published in Elsevier’s journal “Foot and Ankle Clinics of North
America”), each of which is protected by Elsevier’s federally-registered copyrights.
40.
In addition to the Library Genesis Project website accessible at libgen.org, users
may access the Library Genesis Project repository through a number of “mirror” sites accessible
through other URLs. These mirror sites are similar, if not identical, in functionality to
libgen.org. Specifically, the mirror sites allow their users to search and download materials from
the Library Genesis Project repository.
FIRST CLAIM FOR RELIEF
(Direct Infringement of Copyright)
41.
Elsevier incorporates by reference the allegations contained in paragraphs 1-40
42.
Elsevier’s copyright rights and exclusive distribution rights to the works available
above.
on ScienceDirect (the “Works”) are valid and enforceable.
43.
Defendants have infringed on Elsevier’s copyright rights to these Works by
knowingly and intentionally reproducing and distributing these Works without authorization.
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44.
The acts of infringement described herein have been willful, intentional, and
purposeful, in disregard of and indifferent to Plaintiffs’ rights.
45.
Without authorization from Elsevier, or right under law, Defendants are directly
liable for infringing Elsevier’s copyrighted Works pursuant to 17 U.S.C. §§ 106(1) and/or (3).
46.
As a direct result of Defendants’ actions, Elsevier has suffered and continues to
suffer irreparable harm for which Elsevier has no adequate remedy at law, and which will
continue unless Defendants’ actions are enjoined.
47.
Elsevier seeks injunctive relief and costs and damages in an amount to be proven
at trial.
SECOND CLAIM FOR RELIEF
(Secondary Infringement of Copyright)
48.
Elsevier incorporates by reference the allegations contained in paragraphs 1-40
49.
Elsevier’s copyright rights and exclusive distribution rights to the works available
above.
on ScienceDirect (the “Works”) are valid and enforceable.
50.
Defendants have infringed on Elsevier’s copyright rights to these Works by
knowingly and intentionally reproducing and distributing these Works without license or other
authorization.
51.
Upon information and belief, Defendants intentionally induced, encouraged, and
materially contributed to the reproduction and distribution of these Works by third party users of
websites operated by Defendants.
52.
The acts of infringement described herein have been willful, intentional, and
purposeful, in disregard of and indifferent to Elsevier’s rights.
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53.
Without authorization from Elsevier, or right under law, Defendants are directly
liable for third parties’ infringement of Elsevier’s copyrighted Works pursuant to 17 U.S.C. §§
106(1) and/or (3).
54.
Upon information and belief, Defendants profited from third parties’ direct
infringement of Elsevier’s Works.
55.
Defendants had the right and the ability to supervise and control their websites
and the third party infringing activities described herein.
56.
As a direct result of Defendants’ actions, Elsevier has suffered and continues to
suffer irreparable harm for which Elsevier has no adequate remedy at law, and which will
continue unless Defendants’ actions are enjoined.
57.
Elsevier seeks injunctive relief and costs and damages in an amount to be proven
at trial.
THIRD CLAIM FOR RELIEF
(Violation of the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act)
58.
Elsevier incorporates by reference the allegations contained in paragraphs 1-40
59.
Elsevier’s computers and servers, the third-party computers and servers which
above.
store and maintain Elsevier’s copyrighted works for ScienceDirect, and Elsevier’s customers’
computers and servers which facilitate access to Elsevier’s copyrighted works on ScienceDirect,
are all “protected computers” under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”).
60.
Defendants (a) knowingly and intentionally accessed such protected computers
without authorization and thereby obtained information from the protected computers in a
transaction involving an interstate or foreign communication (18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(2)(C)); and
(b) knowingly and with an intent to defraud accessed such protected computers without
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authorization and obtained information from such computers, which Defendants used to further
the fraud and obtain something of value (18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(4)).
61.
Defendants’ conduct has caused, and continues to cause, significant and
irreparable damages and loss to Elsevier.
62.
Defendants’ conduct has caused a loss to Elsevier during a one-year period
aggregating at least $5,000.
63.
As a direct result of Defendants’ actions, Elsevier has suffered and continues to
suffer irreparable harm for which Elsevier has no adequate remedy at law, and which will
continue unless Defendants’ actions are enjoined.
64.
Elsevier seeks injunctive relief, as well as costs and damages in an amount to be
proven at trial.
PRAYER FOR RELIEF
WHEREFORE, Elsevier respectfully requests that the Court:
A. Enter preliminary and permanent injunctions, enjoining and prohibiting Defendants,
their officers, directors, principals, agents, servants, employees, successors and
assigns, and all persons and entities in active concert or participation with them, from
engaging in any of the activity complained of herein or from causing any of the injury
complained of herein and from assisting, aiding, or abetting any other person or
business entity in engaging in or performing any of the activity complained of herein
or from causing any of the injury complained of herein;
B. Enter an order that, upon Elsevier’s request, those in privity with Defendants and
those with notice of the injunction, including any Internet search engines, Web
Hosting and Internet Service Providers, domain-name registrars, and domain name
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registries or their administrators that are provided with notice of the injunction, cease
facilitating access to any or all domain names and websites through which Defendants
engage in any of the activity complained of herein;
C. Enter an order that, upon Elsevier’s request, those organizations which have
registered Defendants’ domain names on behalf of Defendants shall disclose
immediately to Plaintiffs all information in their possession concerning the identity of
the operator or registrant of such domain names and of any bank accounts or financial
accounts owned or used by such operator or registrant;
D. Enter an order that, upon Elsevier’s request, the TLD Registries for the Defendants’
websites, or their administrators, shall place the domain names on
registryHold/serverHold as well as serverUpdate, ServerDelete, and serverTransfer
prohibited statuses, for the remainder of the registration period for any such website.
E. Enter an order canceling or deleting, or, at Elsevier’s election, transferring the domain
name registrations used by Defendants to engage in the activity complained of herein
to Elsevier’s control so that they may no longer be used for illegal purposes;
F. Enter an order awarding Elsevier its actual damages incurred as a result of
Defendants’ infringement of Elsevier’s copyright rights in the Works and all profits
Defendant realized as a result of its acts of infringement, in amounts to be determined
at trial; or in the alternative, awarding Elsevier, pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 504, statutory
damages for the acts of infringement committed by Defendants, enhanced to reflect
the willful nature of the Defendants’ infringement;
G. Enter an order disgorging Defendants’ profits;
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Dockray, Pasquinelli, Smith & Waldorf
There is Nothing Less Passive than the Act of Fleeing
2010
# There is Nothing Less Passive than the Act of Fleeing
[The Public School](/web/20170523052416/http://journalment.org/author/public-
school)
What follows is a condensed and edited version of a text for a panel that was
presented at UCIRA’s _Future Tense: Alternative Arts and Economies in the
University_ conference held in San Diego, California on November 18, 2010.
The panel shared the same name as a 13-day itinerant seminar in Berlin
organized by Dockray, Waldorf, and Fiona Whitton earlier that year, in July.
The seminar began with an excerpt from Tiqqun’s _Introduction to Civil War_ ,
which was co-translated into English by Smith; and later read a chapter from
Pasquinelli’s _Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons_. Both authors have
also participated in meetings at The Public School in Los Angeles and Berlin.
Both the panel and the seminar developed out of longer conversations at The
Public School in Los Angeles, which began in late 2007 under Telic Arts
Exchange. The Public School is a school with no curriculum, where classes are
proposed and organized by the public.
## The Education Factory
The University as I understand it, has been a threshold between youth and the
labor market. Or it has been a threshold between a general education and a
more specialized one. In its more progressive form, it’s been a zone of
transition into an expanding middle class. But does this form still exist? I’m
inclined to think just the opposite, that the University is becoming a mean
for filtering people out of the middle class via student loan debt, which now
exceeds credit card debt. The point of the questions for me is simply what is
the point of the University? What are we fighting for or defending?
The next question might be, do students work? The University is a crucial site
in the reproduction of class relations; we know that students are consumers;
we know the student is a future worker who will be compelled to work, and work
in a specific way, because she/he is crushed by debt contracted during her/his
tenure as a student; we know that students work while attending school, and
that for many students school and work eerily begin to resemble one another.
But asking whether students work is to ask something more specific: do
students produce value and, therefore surplus-value? If we can assume, for the
moment, that students are a factor in the “knowledge production” that takes
place in the University, is this production of knowledge also the production
of value? We confront, maybe, a paradox: all social activity has become
“productive”—captured, absorbed—at the very moment value becomes unmeasurable.
What does this have to do with students, and their work? The thesis of the
social factory was supplemented by the assumption that knowledge had become a
central mode in the production of value in post-Fordist environments. Wouldn’t
this mean that the university could become an increasingly important
flashpoint in social struggles, now that it has become not simply the site of
the reproduction of the capital relation, but involved in the immediate
production process, directly productive of value? Would we have to understand
students themselves as, if not knowledge producers, an irreplaceable moment or
function within that process? None of this remains clear. The question is not
only a sociological one, it is also a political one. The strategy of
reconceptualizing students as workers is rooted in the classical Marxist
identification of revolt with the point of production, that is, exploitation.
To declare all social activity to be productive is another way of saying that
social war can be triggered at any site within society, even among the
precarious, the unemployed, and students.
_Knowledge is tied to struggle. To truly know is to hate truly. This is why
the working class can know and possess everything of capital, as it is enemy
to itself as capital._
—Tronti, 1966
That form of “hate” mentioned by Tronti is suggesting something interesting
form of political passion and a new modus operandi. The relation between hate
and knowledge, suggested by Tronti, is the opposite of the cynical detachment
of the new social figure of the entrepreneur-artist but it’s a joyful hate of
our condition. In order to educate ourselves we should hate our very own
environment and social network in which we were educated—the university. The
position of the artist in their work and the performance of themselves (often
no different) can take are manyfold. There are histories for all of these
postures that can be referenced and adopted. They are all acceptable tactics
as long as we keep doing and churning out more. But where does this get us,
both within the confines of the arts and the larger social structure? We are
taught that the artist is always working, thinking, observing. We have learned
the tricks of communication, performance and adaptability. We can go anywhere,
react to anything, respond in a thoughtful and creative way to all problems.
And we do this because while there is opportunity, we should take it. “We
shouldn’t complain, others have it much worse.” But it doesn’t mean that we
shouldn’t imagine something else. To begin thinking this way, it means a
refusal to deliver an event, to perform on demand. Maybe we need a kind of
inflexibility, of obstruction, of non-conductivity. After all, what exactly
are we producing and performing for? Can we try to think about these talents
of performance, of communication? If so, could this be the basis for an
intimacy, a friendship… another institution?
## Alternative pedagogical models
Let’s consider briefly the desire for “new pedagogical models” and “new forms
of knowledge production”. When articulated by the University, this simply
means new forms of instruction and new forms of research. Liberal faculty and
neoliberal politicians or administrators find themselves joined in this hunt
for future models and forms. On the one hand, faculty imagines that these new
techniques can provide space for continuing the good. On the other hand,
investors, politicians, and administrators look for any means to make the
University profitable; use unpaid labour, eliminate non-productive physical
spaces, and create new markets. Symptomatically, there is very little
resistance to this search for new forms and new models for the simple reason
that there is a consensus that the University should and will continue.
It’s also important to note that many of the so-called new forms and new
models being considered lie beyond the walls and payroll of the institution,
therefore both low-cost and low-risk. It is now a familiar story: the
institution attempts to renew itself by importing its own critique. The Public
School is not a new model and it’s not going to save the University. It is not
even a critique of the University any more or less than it is a critique of
the field of art or of capitalist society. It is not “the next university”
because it is a practice of leaving the University to the side. It would be a
mistake to think that this means isolation or total detachment.
Today, the forms of university governance cannot allow themselves to uproot
self-education. To the contrary, self-education constitutes a vital sap for
the survival of the institutional ruins, snatched up and rendered valuable in
the form of revenue. Governance is the trap, hasty and flexible, of the
common. Instead of countering us frontally, the enemy follows us. We must
immediately reject any weak interpretation of the theme of autonomous
institutions, according to which the institution is a self-governed structure
that lives between the folds of capitalism, without excessively bothering it.
The institutionalisation of self-education doesn’t mean being recognized as
one actor among many within the education market, but the capacity to organize
living knowledge’s autonomy and resistance.
One of the most important “new pedagogical models” that emerged over the past
year in the struggles around the implosion of the “public” university are the
occupations that took place in the Fall of 2009. Unlike other forms of action,
which tend to follow the timetable and cadence of the administration, to the
point of mirroring it, these actions had their own temporality, their own
initiative, their own internal logic. They were not at all concerned with
saving a university that was already in ruins, but rather with creating a
space at the heart of the University within which something else, some future,
could be risked, elaborated, prefigured. Everything had to be improvised, from
moment to moment, and in these improvisations new knowledges were developed
and shared. This improvisation was demanded by the aleatory quality of the
types of relations that emerged within these spaces, relations no longer
regulated by the social alibis that assigns everyone her/his place. When
students occupy university buildings—here in California, in NYC, in Puerto
Rico, in Europe and the UK, everywhere—they do so not because they want to
save their universities. They do so because they know the university for what
it is, as something to be at once seized and abandoned. They know that they
can only rely on and learn from one another.
## The Common and The Public
What is really so disconcerting about this antinomy between the logic of the
common and the logic of the social or the public? For Jacotot, it means the
development of a communist politics that is neither reformist nor seditious2.
It proposes the formation of common spaces at a distance from—if not outside
of—the public sphere and its communicative reason: “whoever forsakes the
workings of the social machine has the opportunity to make the electrical
energy of the emancipation machine.”
What does it mean to forsake the social machine? That is the major political
question facing us today. Such a forsaking would require that our political
energies organize themselves around spaces of experimentation at a distance
not only from the university and what is likely its slow-motion, or sudden,
collapse, but also from an entire imaginary inherited from the workers
movement: the task of a future social emancipation and vectors and forms of
struggle such a task implies. Perhaps what is required is not to put off
equality for the future, but presuppose the common, to affirm that commons as
a fact, a given, which must nevertheless be verified, created, not by a social
body, not by a collective force, but a power of the common, now.
School is not University. Neither is it Academy or College or even Institute.
We are all familiar with the common meaning of the word: it is a place for
learning. In another sense, it also refers to organized education in general,
which is made most clear by the decision to leave, to “drop out of school”.
Alongside these two stable, almost architectural definitions, the word
gestures to composition and movement—the school of bodies, moving
independently, together; the school only exists as long as that collective
movement does. The school takes shape in this oscillation between form and
formlessness, not through the act of constructing a wall but by the process of
realizing its boundary through practice.
Perhaps this is a way to think of how to develop what Felix Guattari called
“the associative sector” in 1982: “everything that isn’t the state, or private
capital, or even cooperatives”3. At first gloss, the associative sector is
only a name for the remainder, the already outside; but, in the language of a
school, it is a constellation of relationships, affinities, new
subjectivities, and movements, flickering into existence through life and use,
An “engaged withdrawal” that simultaneously creates an exit and institutes in
the act of passing through. Which itself might bring us back to school, to the
Greek etymology of school, skhole, “a holding back”, a “keeping clear” of
space for reflective distance. On the one hand, perhaps this reflective space
simply allows theoretical knowledge to shape or affect performative action;
but on the other hand, the production of this “clearing” is not given,
certainly not now and certainly not by the institutions that claim to give it.
Reflective space is not the precondition for performative action. On the
contrary; performative action is the precondition for reflective space—or,
more appropriately, space and action must be coproduced.
Is the University even worth “saving”? We are right to respond with
indignation, or better, with an array of tactics—some procedural, some more
“direct”—against these incursions, which always seem to authorize themselves
by appeals to economic austerity, budget shortfalls, and tightened belts.
Perhaps what is being destroyed in this process is the very notion of the
public sphere itself, a notion that. It is easy to succumb to the illusion
that the only possible result of this destruction of the figure of the public
is privatization. But what if the figure of the public was to be set off
against not only the private and property relations, but against a figure of
the “common” as well? What if, in other words, the notion of the public has
always been an unstable, mediating term between privatization and
communization, and what if the withering of this mediation left these two
process openly at odds with each other? Perhaps, then, it is not simply a
question of saving a university and, more broadly, a public space that is
already withering away; maybe our energies and our intelligence, our
collective or common intellectual forces, should be devoted to organizing and
articulating just this sort of counter-transition, at a distance from the
public and the private.
## Authorship and new forms of knowledge
For decades we have spoken about the “death of the author”. The most sustained
critiques of authorship have been made from the spheres of art and education,
but not coincidentally, these spheres have the most invested in the notion.
Credit and accreditation are the mechanisms for attaching symbolic capital to
individuals via degrees and other lines on CVs. The curriculum vitæ is an
inverted credit report, evidence of underpaid work, kept orderly with an
expectation of some future return.
All of this work, this self-documentation, this fidelity between ourselves and
our papers, is for what, for whom? And what is the consequence of a world
where every person is armed with their vitæ, other than “the war of all
against all?” It’s that sensation that there are no teams but everyone has got
their own jersey.
The idea behind the project The Public School is to teach each other in a very
horizontal way. No curriculum, no hierarchy. But is The Public School able to
produce new knowledge and new content by itself? Can the The Public School
become a sort of autonomous collective author? Or, is The Public School just
about exchanges and social networking?
In the recent history of university struggles, some collectives started to
refresh the idea of coresearch; a form of knowledge that can produce new
subjectivities by researching. New subjectivities that produce new knowledge
and new knowledge that produces new subjectivities If knowledge comes only
from conflict, knowledge goes back to conflict in order to produce new
autonomy and subjectivities.
### The Public School
Sean Dockray, Matteo Pasquinelli, Jason Smith and Caleb Waldorf are founding
members of and collaborators at The Public School. Initiated in 2007 under
Telic Arts Exchange (literally in the basement) in Los Angeles, The Public
School is a school with no curriculum. At the moment, it operates as follows:
first, classes are proposed by the public; then, people have the opportunity
to sign up for the classes; finally, when enough people have expressed
interest, the school finds a teacher and offers the class to those who signed
up. The Public School is not accredited, it does not give out degrees, and it
has no affiliation with the public school system. It is a framework that
supports autodidactic activities, operating under the assumption that
everything is in everything. The Public School currently exists in Los
Angeles, New York, Berlin, Brussels, Helsinki, Philadelphia, Durham, San Juan,
and is still expanding.
USDC
Opinion: Elsevier against SciHub and LibGen
2015
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
----------------------------------------
15 Civ. 4282(RWS)
OPINION
ELSEVIER INC., ELSEVIER B.V., and ELSEVIER LTD.,
Plaintiffs,
- against -
WWW.SCI-HUB.ORG, THE LIBRARY GENESIS PROJECT, d/b/a LIBGEN.ORG, ALEXANDRA ELBAKYAN, and JOHN DOES 1-99,
Defendants.
----------------------------------------
APPEARANCES
Attorneys for the Plaintiffs
DEVORE & DEMARCO LLP
99 Park Avenue, Suite 1100
New York, NY 1001 6
By:
Joseph DeMarco, Esq.
David Hirschberg, Esq.
Urvashi Sen, Esq.
Pro Se
Alexandra Elbakyan
Almaty, Kazakhstan
1
Sweet, D.J.,
Plaintiffs Elsevier Inc., Elsevier B.V., and Elsevier, Ltd. (collectively, "Elsevier" or the "Plaintiffs") have moved for a preliminary injunction preventing defendants Sci-Hub, Library Genesis Project (the " Project"), Alexandra Elbakyan ("Elbakyan"), Bookfi.org, Elibgen.org, Erestroresollege.org, and Libgen.info (collectively, the "Defendants") from distributing works to which Elsevier owns the copyright. Based upon the facts and conclusions below, the motion is granted and the Defendants are prohibited from distributing the Plaintiffs' copyrighted works.
Prior Proceedings
Elsevier, a major publisher of scientific journal articles and book chapters, brought this action on June 2, 2015, alleging that the Defendants, a series of websites affiliated with the Project (the "Website Defendants") and their owner and operator, Alexandra Elbakyan, infringed Elsevier's copyrighted works and violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. (See generally Complaint, Dkt. No. 1.) Elsevier filed the instant motion for a preliminary injunction on June 11, 2015, via an Order to Show Cause. (Dkt. Nos. 5-13.) On June 18, 2015, the Court granted
2
Plaintiffs' Order to Show Cause and authorized service on the
Defendants via email.
week,
(Dkt.
No.
1 5.)
During the following
the Plaintiffs served the Website Defendants via email and
Elbakyan via email and postal mail.
On July 7,
Part One Judge,
and Elbakyan,
2015,
See Dkt.
Nos.
the Honorable Ronnie Abrams,
24-31. )
acting as
held a telephone conference with the Plaintiffs
during which Elbakyan acknowledged receiving the
papers concerning this case and declared that she did not intend
to obtain a lawyer.
conference,
(See Transcript,
Dkt.
No.
38. )
After the
Judge Abrams issued an Order directing Elbakyan to
notify the Court whether she wished assistance in obtaining pro
bono counsel,
se,
and advising her that while she could proceed pro
the Website Defendants,
not being natural persons,
(Dkt. No.
obtain counsel or risk default.
telephonic conference was held on July 14 ,
must
3 6. )
A second
2015,
during which
Elbakyan stated that she needed additional time to find a
lawyer.
( See Transcript,
the request,
Dkt.
No.
4 2. )
Judge Abrams granted
but warned Elbakyan th�t "you have to move quickly
both in attempting to retain an attorney and you' ll have to
stick to the schedule that is set once it' s set. "
After the telephone conference,
(Id.
at 6. )
Judge Abrams issued another
Order setting the preliminary injunction hearing for September
1 6 and directing Elbakyan to inform the Court by July 21 if she
wished assistance in obtaining pro bono counsel.
3
(Dkt. No.
4 0. )
The motion for a preliminary injunction was heard on
September 1 6,
hearing,
201 5.
None of the Defendants appeared at the
although Elbakyan sent a two-page letter to the court
the day before.
(Dkt. No.
50.)
Applicable Standard
Preliminary injunctions are "extraordinary and drastic
remed[ies]
that should not be granted unless the movant,
clear showing,
Armstrong,
carries the burden of persuasion. "
5 20 U. S.
district court may,
9 68,
972 (1997).
by a
Mazurek v.
In a copyright case,
at its discretion,
a
grant a preliminary
injunction when the plaintiffs demonstrate 1) a likelihood of
success on the merits,
injunction,
favor,
2) irreparable harm in the absence of an
3) a balance of the hardships tipping in their
and 4 ) that issuance of an injunction would not do a
disservice to the public interest.
F. 3d 27 5,
278 ( 2d Cir.
W PIX,
Inc.
v. ivi,
Inc.,
691
2012).
The Motion is Granted
With the exception of Elbakyan,
none of the Defendants
filed any opposition to the instant motion,
participated in any
hearing or telephone conference, or in any other way appeared in
4
the case.
Although Elbakyan acknowledges that she is the "main
operator of sci-hub. erg website"
only represent herself pro
se;
(Dkt.
No.
50 at 1. ), she may
since the Website Defendants are
not natural persons, they may only be represented by an attorney
See Max Cash Media, Inc.
admitted to practice in federal court.
v.
Prism Corp. , No.
(S.D. N. Y.
12 Civ.
147, 2012 WL 2861 162, at *1
July 9, 2012);
Auth. , 722 F. 2d 20, 22
(2d Cir.
1983)
(stating reasons for the
rule and noting that it is "venerable and widespread").
Because
the Website Defendants did not retain an attorney to defend this
action, they are in default.
However, the Website Defendants' default does not
the Plaintiffs to an injunction, nor does
automatically entit
the fact that Elbakyan's submission raises no mer
challenge to the Plaintiffs' claims.
Music, No.
2015).
13 Civ.
s-based
See Thurman v.
5194, 2015 WL 2 168134, at *4
Bun Bun
May 7,
(S. D. N. Y.
Instead, notwithstanding the default, the Plaintiffs
must present evidence sufficient to establish that they are
entitled to injunctive relief.
Curveal Fashion, No.
(S. D. N. Y.
Cir.
09 Civ.
Jan 20, 2010);
See id. ;
Inc.
v.
8458, 2010 WL 308303, at *2
CFTC v.
Vartuli, 228 F. 3d 94, 98
2000).
A. Likelihood of S
Gucci Am.,
ss on the
5
rits
(2d
, -
Elsevier has established that the Defendants have
reproduced and distributed its copyrighted works,
of the exclusive rights established by 17
Complaint,
Dkt. No. 1,
at 11-13.)
(1)
"two elements must be
ownership of a valid copyright,
and
(2)
copying of
constituent elements of the work that are original."
Records,
LLC v. Doe 3,
Feist Publ'ns,
See
U.S.C. § 106.
In order to prevail on a
claim for infringement of copyright,
proven:
in violation
604 F.3d 110,
117
Arista
(2d Cir. 2010)
Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co.,
499 U.S.
(quoting
340,
361
(1991) ) .
Elsevier has made a substantial evidentiary showing,
documenting the manner in which the Defendants access its
ScienceDirect database of scientific literature and post
copyrighted material on their own websites free of charge.
According to Elsevier,
the Defendants gain access to
ScienceDirect by using credentials fraudulently obtained from
educational institutions,
including educational institutions
located in the Southern District of New York,
legitimate access to ScienceDirect.
Woltermann
(the "Woltermann Dec.") ,
which are granted
(See Declaration of Anthony
Dkt. No. 8,
at 13-14.)
As
an attachment to one of the supporting declarations to this
motion,
Elsevier includes a sequence of screenshots showing how
a user could go to �ww.sc�-hub.org,
6
one of the Website
Defendants,
search for information on a scientific article,
a set of search results, click on a link,
copyrighted article on ScienceDirect,
get
and be redirected to a
via a proxy.
See
Elsevier also points to a
Walterman Dec. at 41-44 and Ex. U.)
Twitter post (in Russian) indicating that whenever an article is
downloaded via this method,
own servers.
1 2,
Ex.
B.)
the Defendants save a copy on their
(See Declaration of David M. Hirschberg,
As specific examples,
with their copyright registrations.
Dkt.
No. 9,
Exs. B-D.)
No.
Elsevier includes copies of
two of its articles accessed via the Defendants'
Doda,
Dkt.
websites,
along
(Declaration of Paul F.
This showing demonstrates a
likelihood of success on Elsevier' s copyright infringement
claims.
Elsevier also shows a likelihood of success on its claim
under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act ("CFAA").
prohibits,
inter alia,
The CFAA
obtaining information from "any protected
computer" without authorization,
18 U.S. C. § 1030(a)(2)(C),
and
obtaining anything of value by accessing any protected computer
with intent to defraud.
Id.
§ (a) (4).
The definition of
"protected computer" includes one "which is used in or affecting
interstate or foreign commerce or communication,
including a
computer located outside the United States that
is used in a
manner that affects interstate or foreign commerce or
communication of the United States."
7
I .
§ (e) (2) (B);
Nexans
Wires S. A.
2006).
v.
Sa
Inc.
166 F.
App'x 559, 562 n. 5
(2d Cir.
Elsevier's ScienceDirect database is located on multiple
servers throughout the world and is accessed by educational
institutions and their students, and qualifies as a computer
used in interstate commerce, and therefore as a protected
computer under the CFAA.
See Woltermann Dec.
at 2-3. )
As
found above, Elsevier has shown that the Defendants' access to
ScienceDirect was unauthorized and accomplished via fraudulent
university credentials.
While the C fAA requires a civil
plaintiff to have suffered over $5,000 in damage or loss, see
Register. com, Inc.
v.
Verio, Inc. , 356 F. 3d 393, 439
(2d Cir.
2004), Elsevier has made the necessary showing since it
documented between 2,000 and 8,500 of its articles being added
to the LibGen database each day
(Woltermann Dec.
at 8, Exs.
G &
H) and because its articles carry purchase prices of between
$19. 95 and $41. 95 each.
Leon, No.
12 Civ.
Id.
at 2;
see Millennium TGA, Inc.
1360, 2013 WL 5719079, at *10
(E. D. N.Y.
v.
Oct.
18, 2013). 1
Elsevier's evidence is also buttressed by Elbakyan's
submission, in which she frankly admits to copyright
infringement.
1
(See Dkt.
No.
50.)
She discusses her time as a
While Elsevier's articles are likely sufficient on their own to qualify as
"[]thing[s]
of value" under the CFAA,
Elbakyan acknowledges in her submission
that the Defendants derive revenue from their website.
50,
at
1
{"That is true that website collects donations,
pressure anyone to send them.").)
8
Letter,
Dkt. No.
however we do not
student at a university in Kazakhstan, where she did not have
access to research papers and found the prices charged to be
just insane.
(Id.
at 1.)
She obtained the papers she needed
"by pirating them," and found may similar students and
researchers, predominantly in developing count
s, who were in
similar situations and helped each other illicitly obtain
research materials that they could not access legitimately or
afford on the open market.
Id.)
As Elbakyan describes it, "I
could obtain any paper by pirating it, so I solved many requests
and people always were very grateful for my help.
After that, I
created sci-hub.org website that simply makes this process
automatic and the website immediately became popular."
(Id.)
Given Elsevier's strong evidentiary showing and Elbakyan's
admissions, the first prong of the preliminary injunction test
is firmly established.
B. Irreparable Harm
Irreparable harm is present "where, but for the grant of
equitable relief, there is a substantial chance that upon final
resolution of the action the parties cannot be returned to the
positions they previously occupied."
Brenntag Int'l Chems.,
Inc. v. Bank of India, 175 F.3d 245, 249
(2d Cir. 1999).
Here,
there is irreparable harm because it is entirely likely that the
9
•'
damage to Elsevier could not be effectively quantified.
Register.com,
356 F.3d at 404
{"irreparable harm may be found
where damages are difficult to establish and measure.").
would be difficult,
if not impossible,
It
to determine how much
money the Plaintiffs have lost due to the availability of
thousands of their articles on the Defendant websites;
some
percentage of those articles would no doubt have been paid for
legitimately if they were not downloadable for free,
but there
appears to be no way of determining how many that would be.
There is also the matter of harm caused by "viral infringement, "
where Elsevier's content could be transmitted and retransmitted
by third parties who acquired it from the Defendants even after
the Defendants' websites were shut down.
Inc.,
275
765 F. Supp. 2d 594,
(2d Cir. 2012).
620
(S.D.N.Y.
See WPIX,
2011),
'to prove the loss of sales due to
infringement is .
notoriously difficult.'"
Colting,
81
607 F.3d 6 8,
(2d Cir. 2010)
Corp. v. Petri-Kine Camera Co.,
(Friendly,
aff'd 691 F.3d
"(C]ourts have tended to issue injunctions
in this context because
1971)
Inc. v. ivi,
Salinger v.
(quoting Omega Importing
451 F.2d 1190,
1195
(2d Cir.
J.)).
Additionally,
the harm done to the Plaintiffs is likely
irreparable because the scale of any money damages would
dramatically exceed Defendants' ability to pay.
F.3d at 249-50
Brenntag,
175
(explaining that even where money damages can be
10
quantified, there is irreparable harm when a defendant will be
unable to cover the damages).
Defendants'
It is highly likely that the
activities will be found to be willful - Elbakyan
herself refers to the websites'
activities as "pirating" (Dkt.
No. 50 at 1) - in which case they would be liable for between
$750 and $150,000 in statutory damages for each pirated work.
See 17 U.S.C.
§ 504(c);
HarperCollins Publishers LLC v. Open
Road Integrated Media, LLP, 58 F.
2014).
Supp. 3d 380, 38 7 (S.D.N.Y.
Since the Plaintiffs credibly allege that the Defendants
infringe an average of over 3,000 new articles each day
(Woltermann Deel. at 7), even if the Court were to award damages
at the lower end of the statutory range the Defendants'
liability could be extensive.
Since the Defendants are an
individual and a set of websites supported by voluntary
donations, the potential damages are likely to be far beyond the
Defendants'
ability to pay.
C. Balance of Hardships
The balance of hardships clearly tips in favor of the
Plaintiffs.
Elsevier has shown that it is likely to succeed on
the merits, and that it continues to suffer irreparable harm due
to the Defendants'
free.
making its copyrighted material available for
As for the Defendants, "it is axiomatic that an infringer
11
of copyright cannot complain about the loss of ability to offer
its infringing product."
omitted).
W PIX,
691 F.3d at 287 (quotation
The Defendants cannot be legally harmed by the fact
that they cannot continue to steal the Plaintiff' s content,
even
See id.
if they tried to do so for public-spirited reasons.
D. Public Interest
To the extent that Elbakyan mounts a legal challenge to the
motion for a preliminary injunction,
interest prong of the test.
it is on the public
In her letter to the Court,
notes that there are "lots of researchers .
she
. especially in
developing countries" who do not have access to key scientific
papers owned by Elsevier and similar organizations,
and who
cannot afford to pay the high fees that Elsevier charges.
No.
50,
at 1.)
Elbakyan states in her letter that Elsevier
operates by racket:
any papers.
(Dkt.
if you do not send money,
On my website,
as they want for free,
you will not read
any person can read as many papers
and sending donations is their free will.
Why Elsevier cannot work like this,
(Id.)
I wonder?
Elbakyan
also notes that researchers do not actually receive money in
exchange for granting Elsevier a copyright.
Id.)
Rather,
she
alleges they give Elsevier ownership of their works "because
Elsevier is an owner of so-called
12
'high-impact'
journals.
If a
researcher wants to be recognized,
make a career - he or she
needs to have publications in such journals.n
{ Id. at 1-2.)
Elbakyan notes that prominent researchers have made attempts to
boycott Elsevier and states that "[t]he general opinion in
research community is that research papers should be distributed
for free (open access),
not sold.
And practices of such
companies like Elsevier are unacceptable,
distribution of knowledge."
because they limit
ld. at 2.)
Elsevier contends that the public interest favors the
issuance of an injunction because doing so will "protect the
delicate ecosystem which supports scientific research
worldwide."
(Pl.'s Br.,
Dkt. No. 6,
at 21.)
It states that the
money it generates by selling access. to scientific research is
used to support new discoveries,
maintain a "de
discovery."
to create new journals,
and to
nitive and accurate record of scientif
( Id.)
It also argues that allowing its articles to
be widely distributed
sks the spread of bad science - while
Elsevier corrects and retracts articles whose conclusions are
later found to be flawed,
it has no way of doing so when the
content is taken out of its control.
Id. at 22.)
Lastly,
Elsevier argues that injunctive relief against the Defendants is
important to deter "cyber-crime," while
ling to issue an
injunction will incentivize pirates to continue to publish
copyrighted works.
13
It cannot be denied that there is a compelling public
interest in fostering scientific achievement, and that ensuring
broad access to scientific research is an important component of
that effort.
As the Second Circuit has noted, "[c]opyright law
inherently balances [] two competing public interests .
.
. the
rights of users and the public interest in broad accessibility
of creative works, and the rights of copyright owners and the
public interest in rewarding and incentivizing creative efforts
(the
'owner-user balance' )."
WPIX, 691 F.3d at 287 .
Elbakyan' s
solution to the problems she identifies, simply making
copyrighted content available for free via a foreign website,
disserves the public interest.
As the Plaintiffs have
established, there is a "delicate ecosystem which supports
scientific research worldwide,"
( Pl.' s Br., Dkt. No. 6 at 21),
and copyright law pays a critical function within that system.
"Inadequate protections for copyright owners can threaten the
very store of knowledge to be accessed; encouraging the
production of creative work thus ultimately serves the public' s
interest in promoting the accessibility of such works. "
691 F.3d at 287 .
W PIX,
The existence of Elsevier shows that
publication of scient ific research
generates substantial
economic value.
The public' s interest in the broad diffusion of scientific
knowledge is sustained by two critical exceptions in copyright
14
law.
First,
the "idea/expression dichotomy" ensures that while
a scientific article may be subject to copyright,
the ideas and
See 17 U. S.C. § 102(b)
insights within that article are not.
("In no case does copyright protection for an original work of
authorship extend to any idea,
procedure,
method of operation,
concept,
to this distinction,
every idea,
principle,
process,
system,
or discovery").
theory,
"Due
and fact in a
copyrighted work becomes instantly available for public
exploitation at the moment of publication."
537 U.S. 186,
219
(2003).
So while Elsevier may be able to keep
its actual articles behind a paywall,
them are fair game for anyone.
doctrine,
comment,
the discoveries within
Secondly,
codified at 17 U.S.C. § 107,
expressions,
as well as ideas,
news reporting,
Eldred v. Ashcroft,
the "fair use"
allows the public to use
nfor purposes such as criticism,
teaching .
.
.
scholarship,
or
research" without being liable for copyright infringement.
(emphasis added)
Under this doctrine,
themselves may be taken and used,
purposes,
Elsevier' s articles
bu.t only for legitimate
and not for wholesale infringement.
U.S. at 219.2
See Eldred,
537
The public interest in the broad dissemination and
use of scientific research is protected by the idea/expression
dichotomy and the fair use doctrine.
2
See Golan v. Holder,
The public interest in wide d1sseminat1on of scientific works
by the fact that copyrights are given only limited
464
15
U.S.
duration.
417, 431-32
132
is also served
See Sony Corp.
(1984).
S.
Ct. 873,
890 (2012);
Eldred,
537 U.S. at 219.
Given the
importance of scientific research and the critical role that
copyright plays in promoting it,
the public interest weighs in
favor of an injunction.
Conclusion
For the reasons set forth above,
It is hereby ordered that:
preliminary injunction is granted.
1. The Defendants,
agents,
their officers,
servants,
employees,
the motion for a
directors,
principals,
successors and assigns,
and
all persons and entities in active concert or participation
with them,
are hereby temporarily restrained from unlawful
access to,
use,
reproduction,
and/or distribution of
Elsevier's copyrighted works and from assisting,
aiding,
or
abetting any other person or business entity in engaging in
unlawful access to,
use,
reproduction,
and/or distribution
of Elsevier' s copyrighted works.
2. Upon the Plaintiffs'
request,
have registered Defendants'
those organizations which
domain names on behalf of
Defendants shall disclose immediately to the Plaintiffs all
information in their possession concerning the identity of
the operator or registrant of such domain names and of any
16
bank accounts or financial accounts owned or used by such
operator or registrant.
3. Defendants shall not transfer ownership of the Defendants'
websites during the pendency of this Action,
or until
further Order of the Court.
4. The TLD Registries for the Defendants'
administrators,
websites,
or their
shall place the domain names on
registryHold/serverHold as well as serverUpdate,
serverDelete,
and serverTransfer prohibited statuses,
until
further Order of the Court.
5. The Defendants shall preserve copies of all computer files
relating to the use of the websites and shall take all
necessary steps to retrieve computer files relating to the
use of the websites that may have been deleted before entry
of this Order.
6. That security in the amount of $ 5, 000 be posted by the
Plaintiffs within one week of the entry of this Order.
Fed.
R.
Civ.
P. 6 5(c).
17
See
It is so ordered.
New York,
fY
October ? ;--1
2015
R BERT W. SWEET
U.S.D.J.
18
Tenen & Foxman
Book Piracy as Peer Preservation
2014
Book Piracy as Peer Preservation {#book-piracy-as-peer-preservation .entry-title}
**Abstract**
In describing the people, books, and technologies behind one of the
largest "shadow libraries" in the world, we find a tension between the
dynamics of sharing and preservation. The paper proceeds to
contextualize contemporary book piracy historically, challenging
accepted theories of peer production. Through a close analysis of one
digital library's system architecture, software and community, we assert
that the activities cultivated by its members are closer to that of
conservationists of the public libraries movement, with the goal of
preserving rather than mass distributing their collected material.
Unlike common peer production models emphasis is placed on the expertise
of its members as digital preservations, as well as the absorption of
digital repositories. Additionally, we highlight issues that arise from
their particular form of distributed architecture and community.
>
>
> *Literature is the secretion of civilization, poetry of the ideal.
> That is why literature is one of the wants of societies. That is why
> poetry is a hunger of the soul. That is why poets are the first
> instructors of the people. That is why Shakespeare must be translated
> in France. That is why Molière must be translated in England. That is
> why comments must be made on them. That is why there must be a vast
> public literary domain. That is why all poets, all philosophers, all
> thinkers, all the producers of the greatness of the mind must be
> translated, commented on, published, printed, reprinted, stereotyped,
> distributed, explained, recited, spread abroad, given to all, given
> cheaply, given at cost price, given for nothing.*
> ^[1](#fn-2025-1){#fnref-2025-1}^
**Introduction**
The big money (and the bandwidth) in online media is in film, music, and
software. Text is less profitable for copyright holders; it is cheaper
to duplicate and easier to share. Consequently, issues surrounding the
unsanctioned sharing of print material receive less press and scant
academic attention. The very words, "book piracy," fail to capture the
spirit of what is essentially an Enlightenment-era project, openly
embodied in many contemporary "shadow libraries":^[2](#fn-2025-2){#fnref-2025-2}^
in the words of Victor Hugo, to establish a "vast public
literary domain." Writers, librarians, and political activists from Hugo
to Leo Tolstoy and Andrew Carnegie have long argued for unrestricted
access to information as a form of a public good essential to civic
engagement. In that sense, people participating in online book exchanges
enact a role closer to that of a librarian than that of a bootlegger or
a plagiarist. Whatever the reader's stance on the ethics of copyright
and copyleft, book piracy should not be dismissed as mere search for
free entertainment. Under the conditions of "digital
disruption,"^[3](#fn-2025-3){#fnref-2025-3}^ when the traditional
institutions of knowledge dissemination---the library, the university,
the newspaper, and the publishing house---feel themselves challenged and
transformed by the internet, we can look to online book sharing
communities for lessons in participatory governance, technological
innovation, and economic sustainability.
The primary aims of this paper are ethnographic and descriptive: to
study and to learn from a library that constitutes one of the world's
largest digital archives, rivaling *Google Books*, *Hathi Trust*, and
*Europeana*. In approaching a "thick description" of this archive we
begin to broach questions of scope and impact. We would like to ask:
Who? Where? and Why? What kind of people distribute books online? What
motivates their activity? What technologies enable the sharing of print
media? And what lessons can we draw from them? Our secondary aim is to
continue the work of exploring the phenomenon of book sharing more
widely, placing it in the context of other commons-based peer production
communities like Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia. The archetypal model
of peer production is one motivated by altruistic participation. But the
very history of public libraries is one that combines the impulse to
share and to protect. To paraphrase Jacques Derrida
^[4](#fn-2025-4){#fnref-2025-4}^ writing in "Archive Fever," the archive
shelters memory just as it shelters itself from memory. We encompass
this dual dynamic under the term "peer preservation," where the
logistics of "peers" and of "preservation" can sometimes work at odds to
one another.
Academic literature tends to view piracy on the continuum between free
culture and intellectual property rights. On the one side, an argument
is made for unrestricted access to information as a prerequisite to
properly deliberative democracy.^[5](#fn-2025-5){#fnref-2025-5}^ On this
view, access to knowledge is a form of political power, which must be
equitably distributed, redressing regional and social imbalances of
access.^[6](#fn-2025-6){#fnref-2025-6}^ The other side offers pragmatic
reasoning related to the long-term sustainability of the cultural
sphere, which, in order to prosper, must provide proper economic
incentives to content creators.^[7](#fn-2025-7){#fnref-2025-7}^
It is our contention that grassroots file sharing practices cannot be
understood solely in terms of access or intellectual property. Our field
work shows that while some members of the book sharing community
participate for activist or ideological reasons, others do so as
collectors, preservationists, curators, or simply readers. Despite
romantic notions to the contrary, reading is a social and mediated
activity. The reader encounters texts in conversation, through a variety
of physical interfaces and within an ecosystem of overlapping
communities, each projecting their own material contexts, social norms,
and ideologies. A technician who works in a biology laboratory, for
example, might publish closed-access peer-review articles by day, as
part of his work collective, and release terabytes of published material
by night, in the role of a moderator for an online digital library. Our
approach then, is to capture some of the complexity of such an
ecosystem, particularly in the liminal areas where people, texts, and
technology converge.
**Ethics disclaimer**
Research for this paper was conducted under the aegis of piracyLab, an
academic collective exploring the impact of technology on the spread of
knowledge globally.^[8](#fn-2025-8){#fnref-2025-8}^ One of the lab's
first tasks was to discuss the ethical challenges of collaborative
research in this space. The conversation involved students, faculty,
librarians, and informal legal council. Neutrality, to the extent that
it is possible, emerged as one of our foundational principles. To keep
all channels of communication open, we wanted to avoid bias and to give
voice to a diversity of stakeholders: from authors, to publishers, to
distributors, whether sanctioned or not. Following a frank discussion
and after several iterations, we drafted an ethics charter that
continues to inform our work today. The charter contains the following
provisions:
-- We neither condone nor condemn any forms of information exchange.\
-- We strive to protect our sources and do not retain any identifying
personal information.\
-- We seek transparency in sharing our methods, data, and findings with
the widest possible audience.\
-- Credit where credit is due. We believe in documenting attribution
thoroughly.\
-- We limit our usage of licensed material to the analysis of metadata,
with results used for non-commercial, nonprofit, educational purposes.\
-- Lab participants commit to abiding by these principles as long as
they remain active members of the research group.
In accordance with these principles and following the practice of
scholars like Balazs Bodo ^[9](#fn-2025-9){#fnref-2025-9}^, Eric Priest
^[10](#fn-2025-10){#fnref-2025-10}^, and Ramon Lobato and Leah Tang
^[11](#fn-2025-11){#fnref-2025-11}^, we redact the names of file sharing
services and user names, where such names are not made explicitly public
elsewhere.
**Centralization**
We begin with the intuition that all infrastructure is social to an
extent. Even private library collections cannot be said to reflect the
work of a single individual. Collective forces shape furniture, books,
and the very cognitive scaffolding that enables reading and
interpretation. Yet, there are significant qualitative differences in
the systems underpinning private collections, public libraries, and
unsanctioned peer-to-peer information exchanges like *The Pirate Bay*,
for example. Given these differences, the recent history of online book
sharing can be divided roughly into two periods. The first is
characterized by local, ad-hoc peer-to-peer document exchanges and the
subsequent growth of centralized content aggregators. Following trends
in the development of the web as a whole, shadow libraries of the second
period are characterized by communal governance and distributed
infrastructure.
Shadow libraries of the first period resemble a private library in that
they often emanate from a single authoritative source--a site of
collection and distribution associated with an individual collector,
sometimes explicitly. The library of Maxim Moshkov, for example,
established in 1994 and still thriving at *lib.ru*, is one of the most
visible collections of this kind. Despite their success, such libraries
are limited in scale by the means and efforts of a few individuals. Due
to their centralized architecture they are also susceptible to legal
challenges from copyright owners and to state intervention.
Shadow libraries responded to these problems by distributing labor,
responsibility, and infrastructure, resulting in a system that is more
robust, more redundant, and more resistant to any single point of
failure or control.
The case of *Gigapedia* (later *library.nu*) and its related file
hosting service *ifile.it* demonstrates the successes and the
deficiencies of the centralized digital library model. Arguably among
the largest and most popular virtual libraries online in the period of
2009-2011, the sites were operated by Irish
nationals^[12](#fn-2025-12){#fnref-2025-12}^ on domains registered in
Italy and on the island state of Niue, with servers on the territory of
Germany and Ukraine. At its peak, *library.nu* (LNU) hosted more than
400,000 books and was purported to make an "estimated turnover of EUR 8
million (USD 10,602,400) from advertising revenues, donations and sales
of premium-level accounts," at least according to a press release made
by the International Publishers Association
(IPA).^[13](#fn-2025-13){#fnref-2025-13}^\
*Archived version of library.nu, circa 12/10/2010*
Its apparent popularity notwithstanding, *LNU/Gigapedia* was supported
by relatively simple architecture, likely maintained by a lone
developer-administrator. The site itself consisted of a catalog of
digital books and related metadata, including title, author, year of
publication, number of pages, description, category classification, and
a number of boolean parameters (whether the file is bookmarked,
paginated, vectorized, is searchable, and has a cover). Although the
books could be hosted anywhere, many in the catalog resided on the
servers of a "cyberlocker" service *ifile.it*, affiliated with the main
site. Not strictly a single-source archive, *LNU/Gigapedia* was
nevertheless a federated entity, tied to a single site and to a single
individual. On February 15, 2012, in a Munich court, the IPA, in
conjunction with a consortium of international publishing houses and the
help of the German law firm Lausen
Rechtsanwalte,^[14](#fn-2025-14){#fnref-2025-14}^ served judicial
cease-and-desist orders naming both sites (*Gigapedia* and *ifile.it*).
Seventeen injunctions were sought in Ireland, with the consequent
voluntary shut-down of both domains, which for a brief time redirected
visitors first to *Google Books* and then to *Blue Latitudes*, a *New
York Times* bestseller about pirates, for sale on *Amazon*.
Figure 1: Archived version of library.nu, circa 12/10/2010
:::
The relatively brief, by library standards, existence of *LNU/Gigapedia*
underscores a weakness in the federated library model. The site
flourished as long as it did not attract the ire of the publishing
industry. A lack of redundancy in the site's administrative structure
paralleled its lack on the server level. Once the authorities were able
to establish the identity of the site's operators (via *Paypal*
receipts, according to a partner at Lausen Rechtsanwalte), the project
was forced to shut down irrevocably.^[15](#fn-2025-15){#fnref-2025-15}^
The system's single point of origin proved also to be its single point
of failure.
Jens Bammel, Secretary General of the IPA, called the action "an
important step towards a more transparent, honest and fair trade of
digital content on the Internet."^[16](#fn-2025-16){#fnref-2025-16}^ The
rest of the internet mourned the passage of "the greatest, largest and
the best website for downloading
eBooks,"^[17](#fn-2025-17){#fnref-2025-17}^ comparing the demise of
*LNU/Gigapedia* to the burning of the ancient Library of
Alexandria.^[18](#fn-2025-18){#fnref-2025-18}^ Readers from around the
world flocked to sites like *Reddit* and *TorrentFreak* to express their
support and anger. For example, one reader wrote on *TorrentFreak*:
> I live in Macedonia (the Balkans), a country where the average salary
> is somewhere around 200eu, and I'm a student, attending a MA degree in
> communication sci. \[...\] where I come from the public library is not
> an option. \[...\] Our libraries are so poor, mostly containing 30year
> or older editions of books that almost never refer to the field of
> communication or any other contemporary science. My professors never
> hide that they use sites like library.nu \[...\] Original textbooks
> \[...\] are copy-printed handouts of some god knows how obtained
> original \[...\] For a country like Macedonia and the Balkans region
> generally THIS IS A APOCALYPTIC SCALE DISASTER! I really feel like the
> dark age is just around the corner these
> days.^[19](#fn-2025-19){#fnref-2025-19}^
A similar comment on *Reddit* reads:
> This is the saddest news of the year...heart-breaking...shocking...I
> was so attached to this site...I am from a third world country where
> buying original books is way too expensive if we see currency exchange
> rates...library.nu was a sea of knowledge for me and I learnt a lot
> from it \[...\] RIP library.nu...you have ignited several minds with
> free knowledge.^[20](#fn-2025-20){#fnref-2025-20}^
Another redditor wrote:
> This was an invaluable resource for international academics. The
> catalog of libraries overseas often cannot meet the needs of
> researchers in fields not specific to the country in which they are
> located. My doctoral research has taken a significant blow due to this
> recent shutdown \[...\] Please publishers, if you take away such a
> valuable resource, realize that you have created a gap that will be
> filled. This gap can either be filled by you or by
> us.^[21](#fn-2025-21){#fnref-2025-21}^
Another concludes:
> This just makes me want to start archiving everything I can get my
> hands on.^[22](#fn-2025-22){#fnref-2025-22}^
These anecdotal reports confirm our own experiences of studying and
teaching at universities with a diverse audience of international
students, who often recount a similar personal narrative. *Gigapedia*
and analogous sites fulfilled an unmet need in the international market,
redressing global inequities of access to
information.^[23](#fn-2025-23){#fnref-2025-23}^
But, being a cyberlocker-based service, *Gigapedia* did not succeed in
cultivating a meaningful sense of a community (even though it supported
a forum for brief periods of its existence). As Lobato and Tang
^[24](#fn-2025-24){#fnref-2025-24}^ write in their paper on
cyberlocker-based media distribution systems, cyberlockers in general
"do not foster collaboration and co-creation," taking an "instrumental
view of content hosted on their
sites."^[25](#fn-2025-25){#fnref-2025-25}^ Although not strictly a
cyberlocker, *LNU/Gigapedia* fit the profile of a passive,
non-transformative site by these criteria. For Lobato and Tang, the
rapid disappearance of many prominent cyberlocker sites underscores the
"structural instability" of "fragile file-hosting
ecology."^[26](#fn-2025-26){#fnref-2025-26}^ In our case, it would be
more precise to say that cyberlocker architecture highlights rather the
structural instability of centralized media archives, and not of file
sharing communities in general. Although bereaved readers were concerned
about the irrevocable loss of a valuable resource, digital libraries
that followed built a model of file sharing that is more resilient, more
transparent, and more participatory than their *LNU/Gigapedia*
predecessors.
**Distribution**
In parallel with the development of *LNU/Gigapedia*, a group of Russian
enthusiasts were working on a meta-library of sorts, under the name of
*Aleph*. Records of *Aleph's* activity go back at least as far as 2009.
Colloquially known as "prospectors," the volunteer members of *Aleph*
compiled library collections widely available on the gray market, with
an emphasis on academic and technical literature in Russian and
English.\
*DVD case cover of "Traum's library" advertising "more than 167,000
books" in fb2 format. Similar DVDs sell for around 1,000 RUB (\$25-30
US) on the streets of Moscow.*
At its inception, *Aleph* aggregated several "home-grown" archives,
already in wide circulation in universities and on the gray market.
These included:
-- *KoLXo3*, a collection of scientific texts that was at one time
distributed on 20 DVDs, overlapping with early Gigapedia efforts;\
-- *mexmat*, a library collected by the members of Moscow State
University's Department of Mechanics and Mathematics for internal use,
originally distributed through private FTP servers;\
-- *Homelab*, *Ihtik*, and *Ingsat* libraries;\
-- the Foreign Fiction archive collected from IRC \#\*\*\*
2003.09-2011.07.09 and the Internet Library;\
-- the *Great Science Textbooks* collection and, later, over 20 smaller
miscellaneous archives.^[27](#fn-2025-27){#fnref-2025-27}^
In retrospect, we can categorize the founding efforts along three
parallel tracks: 1) as the development of "front-end" server software
for searching and downloading books, 2) as the organization of an online
forum for enthusiasts willing to contribute to the project, and 3) the
collection effort required to expand and maintain the "back-end" archive
of documents, primarily in .pdf and .djvu
formats.^[28](#fn-2025-28){#fnref-2025-28}^ "What do we do?" writes one
of the early volunteers (in 2009) on the topic of "Outcomes, Goals, and
Scope of the Project." He answers: "we loot sites with ready-made
collections," "sort the indices in arbitrary normalized formats," "for
uncatalogued books we build a 'technical index': name of file, size,
hashcode," "write scripts for database sorting after the initial catalog
process," "search the database," "use the database for the construction
of an accessible catalog," "build torrents for the distribution of files
in the collection."^[29](#fn-2025-29){#fnref-2025-29}^ But, "everything
begins with the forum," in the words of another founding
member.^[30](#fn-2025-30){#fnref-2025-30}^ *Aleph*, the very name of the
group, reflects the aspiration to develop a "platform for the inception
of subsequent and more user-friendly" libraries--a platform "useful for
the developer, the reader, and the
librarian."^[31](#fn-2025-31){#fnref-2025-31}^\
Aleph's *anatomy*
Figure 2: DVD case cover of "Traum's library" advertising "more than
167,000 books
:::
What is *Aleph*? Is it a collection of books? A community? A piece of
software? What makes a library? When attempting to visualize Aleph's
constituents (Figure 3), it seems insufficient to point to books alone,
or to social structure, or to technology in the absence of people and
content. Taking a systems approach to description, we understand a
library to comprise an assemblage of books, people, and infrastructure,
along with their corresponding words and texts, rules and institutions,
and shelves and servers.^[32](#fn-2025-32){#fnref-2025-32}^ In this
light, *Aleph*'s iteration on *LNU/Gigapedia* lies not in technological
advancement alone, but in system architecture, on all levels of
analysis.
Where the latter relied on proprietary server applications, *Aleph*
built software that enabled others to mirror and to serve the site in
its entirety. The server was written by d\* from www.l\*.com (Bet),
utilizing a codebase common to several similar large book-sharing
communities. The initial organizational efforts happened on a sub-forum
of a popular torrent tracker (*RR*). Fifteen founding members reached
early consensus to start hashing document filenames (using the MD5
message-digest algorithm), rather than to store files as is, with their
appropriate .pdf or .mobi extensions.^[33](#fn-2025-33){#fnref-2025-33}^
Bit-wise hashing was likely chosen as a (computationally) cheap way to
de-duplicate documents, since two identical files would hash into an
identical string. Hashing the filenames was hoped to have the
side-effect of discouraging direct (file system-level) browsing of the
archive.^[34](#fn-2025-34){#fnref-2025-34}^ Instead, the books were
meant to be accessed through the front-end "librarian" interface, which
added a layer of meta-data and search tools. In other words, the group
went out of its way to distribute *Aleph* as a library and not merely as
a large aggregation of raw files.
Site volunteers coordinate their efforts asynchronously, by means of a
simple online forum (using *phpBB* software), open to all interested
participants. Important issues related to the governance of the
project--decisions about new hardware upgrades, software design, and
book acquisition--receive public airing. For example, at one point, the
site experienced increased traffic from *Google* searches. Some senior
members welcomed the attention, hoping to attract new volunteers. Others
worried increased visibility would bring unwanted scrutiny. To resolve
the issue, a member suggested delisting the website by altering the
robots.txt configuration file and thereby blocking *Google*
crawlers.^[35](#fn-2025-35){#fnref-2025-35}^ Consequently, the site
would become invisible to *Google*, while remaining freely accessible
via a direct link. Early conversations on *RR*, reflect a consistent
concern about the archive's longevity and its vulnerability to official
sanctions. Rather than following the cyber-locker model of distribution,
the prospectors decided to release canonical versions of the library in
chunks, via *BitTorrent*--a distributed protocol for file sharing.
Another decision was made to "store" the library on open trackers (like
*The Pirate Bay*), rather than tying it to a closed, by-invitation-only
community. Although *LN/Gigapedia* was already decentralized to an
extent, the archeology of the community discussion reveals a multitude
of concious choices that work to further atomize *Aleph* and to
decentralize it along the axes of the collection, governance, and
engineering.
By March of 2009 these efforts resulted in approximately 79k volumes or
around 180gb of data.^[36](#fn-2025-36){#fnref-2025-36}^ By December of
the same year, the moderators began talking about a terabyte, 2tb in
2010, and around 7tb by 2011.^[37](#fn-2025-37){#fnref-2025-37}^ By
2012, the core group of "prospectors" grew to 1,000 registered users.
*Aleph*'s main mirror received over a million page views per month and
about 40,000 unique visits per day.^[38](#fn-2025-38){#fnref-2025-38}^
An online eBook piracy report estimates a combined total of a million
unique visitors per day for *Aleph* and its
mirrors.^[39](#fn-2025-39){#fnref-2025-39}^
As of January 2014, the *Aleph* catalog contains over a million books
(1,021,000) and over 15 million academic articles, "weighing in" at just
under 10tb. Most remarkably, one of the world's largest digital
libraries operates on an annual budget of \$1,900
US.^[40](#fn-2025-40){#fnref-2025-40}^
\#\#\# Vulnerability\
Distributed architecture gives *Aleph* significant advantages over its
federated predecessors. Were *Aleph* servers to go offline the archive
would survive "in the cloud" of the *BitTorrent* network. Should the
forum (*Bet*) close, another online forum could easily take its place.
And were *Aleph* library portal itself go dark, other mirrors would (and
usually do) quickly take its place.
But the decentralized model of content distribution is not without its
challenges. To understand them, we need to review some of the
fundamentals behind the *BitTorrent* protocol. At its bare minimum (as
it was described in the original specification by Bram Cohen) the
protocol involves a "seeder," someone willing to share something it its
entirety; a "leecher," someone downloading shared data; and a torrent
"tracker" that coordinates activity between seeders and
leechers.^[41](#fn-2025-41){#fnref-2025-41}^
Imagine a music album sharing agreement between three friends, where,
initially, only one holds a copy of some album: for example, Nirvana's
*Nevermind*. Under the centralized model of file sharing, the friend
holding the album would transmit two copies, one to each friend. The
power of *BitTorrent* comes from shifting the burden of sharing from a
single seeder (friend one) to a "swarm" of leechers (friends two and
three). On this model, the first leecher joining the network (friend
two, in our case) would begin to get his data from the seeder directly,
as before. But the second leecher would receive some bits from the
seeder and some from the first leecher, in a non-linear, asynchronous
fashion. In our example, we can imagine the remaining friend getting
some songs from the first friend and some from the second. The friend
who held the album originally now transmitted something less than two
full copies of the album, since the other two friends exchanged some
bits of information between themselves, lessening the load on the
original album holder.
When downloading from the *BitTorrent* network, a peer may receive some
bits from the beginning of the document, some from the middle, and some
from the end, in parts distributed among the members of the swarm. A
local application called the "client" is responsible for checking the
integrity of the pieces and for reassembling the them into a coherent
whole. A torrent "tracker" coordinates the activity between peers,
keeping track of who has what where. Having received the whole document,
a leecher can, in turn, become a seeder by sharing all of his downloaded
bits with the remaining swarm (who only have partial copies). The
leecher can also take the file offline, choosing not to share at
all.^[42](#fn-2025-42){#fnref-2025-42}^
The original protocol left torrent trackers vulnerable to charges of
aiding and abetting copyright
infringement.^[43](#fn-2025-43){#fnref-2025-43}^ Early in 2008, Cohen
extended *BitTorrent* to make use of "distributed sloppy hash tables"
(DHT) for storing peer locations without resorting to a central tracker.
Under these new guidelines, each peer would maintain a small routing
table pointing to a handful of nearby peer locations. In effect, DHT
placed additional responsibility on the swarm to become a tracker of
sorts, however "sloppy" and imperfect. By November of of 2009, *Pirate
Bay* announced its transition away from tracking entirely, in favor of
DHT and the related PEX and Magnetic Links protocols. At the time they
called it, "world's most resilient
tracking."^[44](#fn-2025-44){#fnref-2025-44}^
Despite these advancements, the decentralized model of file sharing
remains susceptible to several chronic ailments. The first follows from
the fact that ad-hoc distribution networks privilege popular material. A
file needs to be actively traded to ensure its availability. If nobody
is actively sharing and downloading Nirvana's *Nevermind*, the album is
in danger of fading out of the cloud. As one member wrote succinctly on
*Gimel* forums, "unpopular files are in danger of become
inaccessible."^[45](#fn-2025-45){#fnref-2025-45}^ This dynamic is less
of a concern for Hollywood blockbusters, but more so for "long tail"
specialized materials of the sort found in *Aleph*, and indeed, for
*Aleph* itself as a piece of software distributed through the network.
*Aleph* combats the problem of fading torrents by renting
"seedboxes"--servers dedicated to keeping the *Aleph* seeds containing
the archive alive, preserving the availability of the collection. The
server in production as of 2014 can serve up to 12tb of data speeds of
100-800 megabits per second. Other file sharing communities address the
issue by enforcing a certain download to upload ratio on members of
their network.
The lack of true anonymity is the second problem intrinsic to the
*BitTorrent* protocol. Peers sharing bits directly cannot but avoid
exposing their IP address (unless these are masked behind virtual
private networks or TOR relays). A "Sybil" attack becomes possible when
a malicious peer shares bits in bad faith, with the intent to log IP
addresses.^[46](#fn-2025-46){#fnref-2025-46}^ Researchers exploring this
vector of attack were able to harvest more than 91,000 IP addresses in
less than 24 hours of sharing a popular television
show.^[47](#fn-2025-47){#fnref-2025-47}^ They report that more than 9%
of requests made to their servers indicated "modified clients", which
are likely also to be running experiments in the DHT. Legitimate
copyright holders and copyright "trolls" alike have used this
vulnerability to bring lawsuits against individual sharers in
court.^[48](#fn-2025-48){#fnref-2025-48}^
These two challenges are further exacerbated in the case of *Aleph*,
which uses *BitTorrent* to distribute large parts of its own
architecture. These parts are relatively large--around 40-50GB each.
Long-term sustainability of *Aleph* as a distributed system therefore
requires a rare participant: one interested in downloading the archive
as a whole (as opposed to downloading individual books), one who owns
the hardware to store and transmit terabytes of data, and one possessing
the technical expertise to do so safely.
**Peer preservation**
In light of the challenges and the effort involved in maintaining the
archive, one would be remiss to describe *Aleph* merely in terms of book
piracy, understood in conventional terms of financial gain, theft, or
profiteering. Day-to-day labor of the core group is much more
comprehensible as a mode of commons-based peer production, which is, in
the canonical definition, work made possible by a "networked
environment," "radically decentralized, collaborative, and
non-proprietary; based on sharing resources and outputs among widely
distributed, loosely connected individuals who cooperate with each other
without relying on either market signals or managerial
commands."^[49](#fn-2025-49){#fnref-2025-49}^ *Aleph* answers the
definition of peer production, resembling in many respects projects like
*Linux*, *Wikipedia*, and *Project Gutenberg*.
Yet, *Aleph* is also patently a library. Its work can and should be
viewed in the broader context of Enlightenment ideals: access to
literacy, universal education, and the democratization of knowledge. The
very same ideals gave birth to the public library movement as a whole at
the turn of the 20th century, in the United States, Europe, and
Russia.^[50](#fn-2025-50){#fnref-2025-50}^ Parallels between free
library movements of the early 20th and the early 21st centuries point
to a social dynamic that runs contrary to the populist spirit of
commons-based peer production projects, in a mechanism that we describe
as peer preservation. The idea encompasses conflicting drives both to
share and to hoard information.
The roots of many public libraries lie in extensive private collections.
Bodleian Library at Oxford, for example, traces its origins back to the
collections of Thomas Cobham, Bishop of Worcester, Humphrey, Duke of
Gloucester, and to Thomas Bodley, himself an avid book collector.
Similarly, Poland's Zaluski Library, one of Europe's oldest, owes its
existence to the collecting efforts of the Zaluski brothers, both
bishops and bibliophiles.^[51](#fn-2025-51){#fnref-2025-51}^ As we
mentioned earlier, *Aleph* too began its life as an aggregator of
collections, including the personal libraries of Moshkov and Traum. When
books are scarce, private libraries are a sign of material wealth and
prestige. In the digital realm, where the cost of media acquisition is
low, collectors amass social capital. *Aleph* extends its collecting
efforts on *RR*, a much larger, moderated torrent exchange forum and
tracker. *RR* hosts a number of sub-forums dedicated to the exchange of
software, film, music, and books (where members of *Aleph* often make an
appearance). In the exchange economy of symbolic goods, top collectors
are known by their standing in the community, as measured by their
seniority, upload and download ratios, and the number of "releases." A
release is more than just a file: it must not duplicate items in the
archive and follows strict community guidelines related to packaging,
quality, and meta-data accompanying the document. Less experienced
members of the community treat high status numbers with reverence and
respect.
According to a question and answer session with an official *RR*
representative, *RR* is not particularly friendly to new
users.^[52](#fn-2025-52){#fnref-2025-52}^ In fact, high barriers to
entry are exactly what differentiates *RR* from sites like *The Pirate
Bay* and other unmoderated, open trackers. *RR* prides itself on the
"quality of its moderation." Unlike *Pirate Bay*, *RR* sees itself as a
"media library", where content is "organized and properly shelved." To
produce an acceptable book "release" one needs to create a package of
files, including well-formatted meta-data (following strict stylistic
rules) in the header, the name of the book, an image of its cover, the
year of release, author, genre, publisher, format, language, a required
description, and screenshots of a sample page. The files must be named
according to a convention, be "of the same kind" (that is belong to the
same collection), and be of the right size. Home-made scans are
discouraged and governed by a 1,000-words instruction manual. Scanned
books must have clear attribution to the releaser responsible for
scanning and processing.
More than that, guidelines indicate that smaller releases should be
expected to be "absorbed" into larger ones. In this way, a single novel
by Charles Dickens can and will be absorbed into his collected works,
which might further be absorbed into "Novels of 19th Century," and then
into "Foreign Fiction" (as a hypothetical, but realistic example).
According to the rules, the collection doing the absorbing must be "at
least 50% larger than the collection it is absorbing." Releases are
further governed by a subset or rules particular to the forum
subsections (e.g. journals, fiction, documentation, service manuals,
etc.).^[53](#fn-2025-53){#fnref-2025-53}^
All this to say that although barriers to acquisition are low, the
barriers to active participation are high and continually *increase with
time*. The absorption of smaller collections by larger favors the
veterans. Rules and regulations grow in complexity with the maturation
of the community, further widening the rift between senior and junior
peers. We are then witnessing something like the institutionalization of
a professional "librarian" class, whose task it is to protect the
collection from the encroachment of low-quality contributors. Rather
than serving the public, a librarian's primary commitment is to the
preservation of the archive as a whole. Thus what starts as a true peer
production project, may, in the end, grow to erect solid walls to
peering. This dynamic is already embodied in the history of public
libraries, where amateur librarians of the late 19th century eventually
gave way to their modern degree-holding counterparts. The conflicting
logistics of access and preservation may lead digital library
development along a similar path.
The expression of this dual push and pull dynamic in the observed
practices of peer preservation communities conforms to Derrida's insight
into the nature of the archive. Just as the walls of a library serve to
shelter the documents within, they also isolate the collection from the
public at large. Access and preservation, in that sense, subsist at
opposite and sometime mutually exclusive ends of the sharing spectrum.
And it may be that this dynamic is particular to all peer production
communities, like *Wikipedia*, which, according to recent studies, saw a
decline in new contributors due to increasingly strict rule
enforcement.^[54](#fn-2025-54){#fnref-2025-54}^ However, our results are
merely speculative at the moment. The analysis of a large dataset we
have collected as corollary to our field work online may offer further
evidence for these initial intuitions. In the meantime, it is not enough
to conclude that brick-and-mortar libraries should learn from these
emergent, distributed architectures of peer preservation. If the future
of *Aleph* is leading to increased institutionalization, the community
may soon face the fate embodied by its own procedures: the absorption of
smaller, wonderfully messy, ascending collections into larger, more
established, and more rigid social structures.
**Biographies**
Dennis Tenen teaches in the fields of new media and digital humanities
at Columbia University, Department of English and Comparative
Literature. His research often happens at the intersection of people,
texts, and technology. He is currently writing a book on minimal
computing, called *Plain Text*.
Maxwell Foxman is an adjunct professor at Marymount Manhattan College
and a PhD candidate in Communications at Columbia University, where he
studies the use and adoption of digital media into everyday life. He has
written on failed social media and on gamification in electoral
politics, newsrooms, and mobile media.
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1. [Victor Hugo, *Works of Victor Hugo* (New York: Nottingham Society,
1907), 230. [[↩](#fnref-2025-1)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-1}
2. [Lawrence Liang, "Shadow Libraries E-Flux," 2012.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-2)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-2}
3. [McKendrick, Joseph. *Libraries: At the Epicenter of the Digital
Disruption, The Library Resource Guide Benchmark Study on 2013/14
Library Spending Plans* (Unisphere Media, 2013).
[[↩](#fnref-2025-3)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-3}
4. ["Archive Fever: a Freudian Impression," *Diacritics* 25, no. 2
(July 1995): 9--63.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-4)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-4}
5. [Yochai Benkler, *The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production
Transforms Markets and Freedom* (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2006), 92; Paul DiMaggio et al., "Social Implications of the
Internet," *Annual Review of Sociology* 27 (January 2001): 320; Zizi
Papacharissi "The Virtual Sphere the Internet as a Public Sphere,"
*New Media & Society* 4.1 (2002): 9--27; Craig Calhoun "Information
Technology and the International Public Sphere," in *Shaping the
Network Society: the New Role of Civil Society in Cyberspace*, ed.
Douglas Schuler and Peter Day (MIT Press, 2004), 229--52.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-5)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-5}
6. [Benkler, *The Wealth of Networks*, 442; Manuel Castells,
"Communication, Power and Counter-Power in the Network Society,"
*International Journal of Communication* (2007): 251; Lawrence
Lessig *Free Culture:How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to
Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity* (The Penguin Press, 2004);
Clay Shirky Here Comes Everybody: the Power of Organizing Without
Organizations (New York: Penguin Press, 2008), 153.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-6)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-6}
7. [Brian R. Day "In Defense of Copyright: Creativity, Record Labels,
and the Future of Music," *Seton Hall Journal of Sports and
Entertainment Law*, 21.1 (2011); William M. Landes and Richard A.
Posner, *The Economic Structure of Intellectual Property Law*
(Harvard University Press, 2003). For further discussion see
Steve P. Calandrillo, "Economic Analysis of Property Rights in
Information: Justifications and Problems of Exclusive Rights,
Incentives to Generate Information, and the Alternative of a
Government-Run Reward System" *Fordham Intellectual Property, Media
& Entertainment Law Journal* 9 (1998): 306; Julie Cohen, "Creativity
and Culture in Copyright Theory," *U.C. Davis Law Review* 40 (2006):
1151; Justin Hughes "Philosophy of Intellectual Property,"
*Georgetown Law Journal* 77 (1988): 303.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-7)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-7}
8. [[piracylab.org](“http://piracylab.org”).
[[↩](#fnref-2025-8)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-8}
9. ["Set the Fox to Watch the Geese: Voluntary IP Regimes in Piratical
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[[↩](#fnref-2025-9)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-9}
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[[↩](#fnref-2025-10)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-10}
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[[↩](#fnref-2025-11)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-11}
12. [The injunctions name I\* and F\* N\* (also known as Smiley).
[[↩](#fnref-2025-12)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-12}
13. ["Publishers Strike Major Blow against Internet Piracy" last
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[[↩](#fnref-2025-13)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-13}
14. [Including the German Publishers and Booksellers Association,
Cambridge University Press, Georg Thieme, Harper Collins, Hogrefe,
Macmillan Publishers Ltd., Cengage Learning, Elsevier, John Wiley &
Sons, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Pearson Education Ltd., Pearson
Education Inc., Oxford University Press, Springer, Taylor & Francis,
C.H. Beck as well as Walter De Gruyter. The legal proceedings are
also supported by the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the
Dutch Publishers Association (NUV), the Italian Publishers
Association (AIE) and the International Association of Scientific
Technical and Medical Publishers (STM).
[[↩](#fnref-2025-14)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-14}
15. [Andrew Losowsky, "Book Downloading Site Targeted in Injunctions
Requested by 17 Publishers," *Huffington Post*, accessed on
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[[↩](#fnref-2025-15)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-15}
16. [International Publishers Association.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-16)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-16}
17. [Vik, "Gigapedia: The greatest, largest and the best website for
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10, 2009 and archived on July 15, 2012,
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18. [Anonymous author, "Library.nu: Modern era's 'Destruction of the
Library of Alexandria,'" *Breaking Culture* (on tublr.com), last
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[[↩](#fnref-2025-18)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-18}
19. [[http://torrentfreak.com/book-publishers-shut-down-library-nu-and-ifile-it-120215](“https://web.archive.org/web/20140110050710/http://torrentfreak.com/book-publishers-shut-down-library-nu-and-ifile-it-120215”)
archived on January 10, 2014.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-19)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-19}
20. [[http://www.reddit.com/r/trackers/comments/ppfwc/librarynu\_admin\_the\_website\_is\_shutting\_down\_due](“https://web.archive.org/web/20140110050450/http://www.reddit.com/r/trackers/comments/ppfwc/librarynu_admin_the_website_is_shutting_down_due”)
archived on January 10, 2014.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-20)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-20}
21. [[http://www.reddit.com/r/trackers/comments/ppfwc/librarynu\_admin\_the\_website\_is\_shutting\_down\_due](“https://web.archive.org/web/20140110050450/http://www.reddit.com/r/trackers/comments/ppfwc/librarynu_admin_the_website_is_shutting_down_due”)
orchived on January 10, 2014.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-21)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-21}
22. [[www.reddit.com/r/trackers/comments/ppfwc/librarynu\_admin\_the\_website\_is\_shutting\_down\_due](“https://web.archive.org/web/20140110050450/http://www.reddit.com/r/trackers/comments/ppfwc/librarynu_admin_the_website_is_shutting_down_due”)
archived on January 10, 2014.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-22)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-22}
23. [This point is made at length in the report on media piracy in
emerging economies, released by the American Assembly in 2011. See
Joe Karaganis, ed. *Media Piracy in Emerging Economies* (Social
Science Research Network, March 2011),
[http://piracy.americanassembly.org/the-report/](“http://piracy.americanassembly.org/the-report/”), I.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-23)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-23}
24. [Lobato and Tang, "The Cyberlocker Gold Rush."
[[↩](#fnref-2025-24)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-24}
25. [Lobato and Tang, "The Cyberlocker Gold Rush," 9.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-25)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-25}
26. [Lobato and Tang, "The Cyberlocker Gold Rush," 7.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-26)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-26}
27. [GIMEL/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=169; GIMEL/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=299.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-27)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-27}
28. [GIMEL/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=299.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-28)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-28}
29. [GIMEL/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=169. All quotes translated from Russian
by the authors, unless otherwise noted.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-29)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-29}
30. [GIMEL/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6999&p=41911.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-30)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-30}
31. [GIMEL/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=757.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-31)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-31}
32. [In this sense, we see our work as complementary to but not
exhausted by infrastructure studies. See Geoffrey C. Bowker and
Susan Leigh Star, *Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its
Consequences* (The MIT Press, 1999); Paul N. Edwards, "Y2K:
Millennial Reflections on Computers as Infrastructure," *History and
Technology* 15.1-2 (1998): 7--29; Paul N. Edwards, "Infrastructure
and Modernity: Force, Time, and Social Organization in the History
of Sociotechnical Systems," in *Modernity and Technology*, 2003,
185--225; Paul N. Edwards et al., "Introduction: an Agenda for
Infrastructure Studies," *Journal of the Association for Information
Systems* 10.5 (2009): 364--74; Brian Larkin "Degraded Images,
Distorted Sounds: Nigerian Video and the Infrastructure of Piracy,"
*Public Culture* 16.2 (2004): 289--314; Brian Larkin "Pirate
Infrastructures," in *Structures of Participation in Digital
Culture*, ed. Joe Karaganis (New York: SSRC, 2008), 74--87; Susan
Leigh Star and Geoffrey C. Bowker, "How to Infrastructure," in
*Handbook of New Media: Social Shaping and Social Consequences of
ICTs*, (SAGE Publications Ltd, 2010), 230--46.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-32)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-32}
33. [For information on cryptographic hashing see Praveen Gauravaram and
Lars R. Knudsen, "Cryptographic Hash Functions," in *Handbook of
Information and Communication Security*, ed. Peter Stavroulakis and
Mark Stamp (Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2010), 59--79.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-33)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-33}
34. [See GIMEL/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=55kj and
GIMEL/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=18&sid=936.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-34)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-34}
35. [GIMEL/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=714.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-35)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-35}
36. [GIMEL/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=47.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-36)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-36}
37. [GIMEL/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=175&hilit=RR&start=25.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-37)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-37}
38. [GIMEL/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=104&start=450.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-38)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-38}
39. [URL redacted; These numbers should be taken as a very rough
estimate because 1) we do not consider Alexa to be a reliable source
for web traffic and 2) some of the other figures cited in the report
are suspicious. For example, *Aleph* has a relatively small archive
of foreign fiction, at odds with the reported figure of 800,000
volumes. [[↩](#fnref-2025-39)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-39}
40. [GIMEL/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=7061.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-40)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-40}
41. ["The BitTorrent Protocol Specification," last modified October 20,
2012 and archived on June 13, 2014,
[http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep\_0003.html](“http://web.archive.org/web/20140613190300/http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0003.html”).
[[↩](#fnref-2025-41)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-41}
42. [For more information on BitTorrent, see Bram Cohen, *Incentives
Build Robustness in BitTorrent*, last modified on May 22, 2003,
[http://www.bittorrent.org/bittorrentecon.pdf](“http://www.bittorrent.org/bittorrentecon.pdf”);
Ricardo Salmon, Jimmy Tran, and Abdolreza Abhari, "Simulating a File
Sharing System Based on BitTorrent," in *Proceedings of the 2008
Spring Simulation Multiconference*, SpringSim '08 (San Diego, CA,
USA: Society for Computer Simulation International, 2008), 21:1--5.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-42)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-42}
43. [In 2008 *The Pirate Bay* co-founders Peter Sunde, Gottfrid
Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij, and Carl Lundstromwere were charged
with "conspiracy to break copyright related offenses" in Sweden. See
Simon Johnson for Reuters.com, "Pirate Bay Copyright Test Case
Begins in Sweden," last edited on February 16, 2009 and archived on
August 4, 2014,
[http://uk.reuters.com/article/2009/02/16/tech-us-sweden-piratebay-idUKTRE51F3K120090216](http://web.archive.org/web/20140804000829/http://uk.reuters.com/article/2009/02/16/tech-us-sweden-piratebay-idUKTRE51F3K120090216”).
[[↩](#fnref-2025-43)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-43}
44. [TPB, "Worlds most resiliant tracking," last edited November 17,
2009 and archived on August 4, 2014,
[thepiratebay.se/blog/175](“http://web.archive.org/web/20140804015645/http://thepiratebay.se/blog/175”).
[[↩](#fnref-2025-44)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-44}
45. [GIMEL/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6999.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-45)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-45}
46. [Thibault Cholez, Isabelle Chrisment, and Olivier Festor "Evaluation
of Sybil Attacks Protection Schemes in KAD," in *Scalability of
Networks and Services*, ed. Ramin Sadre and Aiko Pras, Lecture Notes
in Computer Science 5637 (Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2009), 70--82.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-46)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-46}
47. [J.P. Timpanaro et al., "BitTorrent's Mainline DHT Security
Assessment," in *2011 4th IFIP International Conference on New
Technologies, Mobility and Security (NTMS)*, 2011, 1--5.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-47)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-47}
48. [Ernesto, "US P2P Lawsuit Shows Signs of a 'Pirate Honeypot',"
Technology, *TorrentFreak*, last edited in June 2011 and archived on
January 14, 2014,
[http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-p2p-lawsuit-shows-signs-of-a-pirate-honeypot-110601/](“https://web.archive.org/web/20140114200326/http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-p2p-lawsuit-shows-signs-of-a-pirate-honeypot-110601/”).
[[↩](#fnref-2025-48)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-48}
49. [Benkler *The Wealth of Networks*, 60.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-49)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-49}
50. [On the free and public library movement in England and the United
States see Thomas Greenwood, *Public Libraries: a History of the
Movement and a Manual for the Organization and Management of Rate
Supported Libraries* (Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, 1890);
Elizabeth Akers Allen and James Phinney Baxter, *Dedicatory
Exercises of the Baxter Building* (Auburn, Me: Lakeside Press,
1889). To read more about the history of free and public library
movements in Russia see Mary Stuart, "The Evolution of Librarianship
in Russia: the Librarians of the Imperial Public Library,
1808-1868," *The Library Quarterly* 64.1 (January 1994): 1--29; Mary
Stuart, "Creating a National Library for the Workers' State: the
Public Library in Petrograd and the Rumiantsev Library Under
Bolshevik Rule," *The Slavonic and East European Review* 72.2 (April
1994): 233--58; Mary Stuart "The Ennobling Illusion: the Public
Library Movement in Late Imperial Russia," *The Slavonic and East
European Review* 76.3 (July 1998): 401--40.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-50)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-50}
51. [Michael H. Harris, *History of Libraries of the Western World*,
(London: Scarecrow Press, 1999), 136.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-51)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-51}
52. [http://s\*.d\*.ru/comments/508985/.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-52)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-52}
53. [RR/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1590026.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-53)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-53}
54. [Aaron Halfaker et al."The Rise and Decline of an Open Collaboration
System: How Wikipedia's Reaction to Popularity Is Causing Its
Decline," *American Behavioral Scientist*, December 2012.
[[↩](#fnref-2025-54)]{.footnotereverse}]{#fn-2025-54}
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