Shadow library

Shadow libraries are online databases of readily available content that is normally obscured or otherwise not readily accessible. Such content may be inaccessible for a number of reasons, including the use of paywalls, copyright controls, or other barriers to accessibility placed upon the content by its original owners.[1][2] Shadow libraries usually consist of textual information as in electronic books, but may also include other digital media, including software, music, or films.

Examples of shadow libraries include Anna's Archive, Library Genesis, Sci-Hub and Z-Library, which are popular book and academic shadow libraries[1][3] and may be the largest public libraries for books and literature.

Motivation
See also: Open access and Serials crisis
Growth of Library Genesis, 2009-2022

One of the primary motivations behind the creation of shadow libraries is to more readily disseminate academic content, especially papers from academic journals.[2] Academic literature has become increasingly expensive, as costs to access information created by scholars have risen dramatically in recent years, especially the cost of books.[4] The term serials crisis has emerged to describe this ongoing trend.

Conversely, the same motivation behind the serials crisis has also given rise to a concerted international political movement to make academic knowledge free or very cheap, known as the Open Access movement.[5] The Open Access movement strives to establish both journals that are free to access (known as open access journals) and free-to-access repositories of academic journal papers published elsewhere. However, many open access journals require academics to pay fees to be published in an open access journal, which disincentives academics from publishing in such journals.[6]

A tertiary motivator for the establishment of shadow libraries is the tacit endorsement by many academics of such efforts.[7] Academics are rarely compensated by publishers for their work, regardless of whether their work is published in an open access journal or a conventionally priced journal. Thus, there is now little incentive for academics to disavow shadow libraries. Furthermore, shadow libraries actually greatly increase the impact of the academics whose work is available within shadow libraries. According to one study from Cornell University, articles that are on Sci-Hub receive 1.72 times as many citations as articles from journals of similar quality that are not available on Sci-Hub.[8]

Content hosted by some shadow libraries may be hosted without the consent of the original owners of the material. This may make some shadow libraries illegal; however, as researchers are not required to disclose the means by which they access academic material, it is difficult to monitor for the use of illegally accessed academic papers. Furthermore, not all authors agree with trying to compromise access to shadow libraries, including the Z-Library, and at least one author, Alison Rumfitt, has come to defend maintaining access to such libraries.[9]

The legality of directing individuals to shadow libraries is broadly undetermined. There is currently no consensus among legal authorities in the United States and Europe as to what extent advertising shadow libraries constitutes a criminal offense. There are currently no settled cases determining whether it is permissible by academics to directly provide links to shadow libraries, though threats of legal action by academic publishers regarding such references have occurred in isolated incidents. Legal action against researchers remains uncommon.[10]

While most academics are not penalized for distributing their published works independently and freely (therefore obviating the need for shadow libraries in the first place), there are reports of academic publishers threatening such academics with legal action.[11]

Used resilience technologies

Shadow libraries (or their content databases) make use of BitTorrent (mainly for database dumps), dark web and IPFS technologies to increase their resilience or distribute loads.[12][13][14][15][16] In the case of Anna's Archive, the software is developed and made accessible as open source software, enabling code development by any volunteer and mirrors or forks, with the site claiming that "if we get taken down we'll just pop right up elsewhere, since all our code and data is fully open source".[17][18]

See also

References
  1. Karaganis, Joe, ed. (2018). Shadow Libraries: Access to Knowledge in Global Higher Education. The MIT Press. doi:10.7551/mitpress/11339.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-262-34569-9. Archived from the original on 2021-07-02. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  2. Woodcock, Claire (November 30, 2022). "'Shadow Libraries' Are Moving Their Pirated Books to The Dark Web After Fed Crackdowns - Academic repositories like LibGen and Z-Library are becoming less accessible on the web, but finding a home on alt-networks like Tor and IPFS". Vice. Archived from the original on November 30, 2022. Retrieved November 30, 2022.
  3. Van der Sar, Ernesto (November 19, 2022). ""Anna's Archive" Opens the Door to Z-Library and Other Pirate Libraries". TorrentFreak. Archived from the original on November 19, 2022. Retrieved January 3, 2023.
  4. "Trends in the Price of Academic Titles in the Humanities and Other Fields". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Archived from the original on 2021-04-20. Retrieved 2021-02-15.
  5. "Schattenbibliotheken: Piraterie oder Notwendigkeit?". iRights – Kreativität und Urheberrecht in der digitalen Welt (in German). Archived from the original on 2021-07-02. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  6. Suber, Peter (2013-10-21). "Open access: six myths to put to rest". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on 2021-02-20. Retrieved 2021-02-15.
  7. "Shadow Libraries – The Piracy Years". Archived from the original on 2021-07-02. Retrieved 2021-02-15.
  8. Correa, Juan C.; Laverde-Rojas, Henry; Tejada, Julian; Marmolejo-Ramos, Fernando (January 2022). "The Sci-Hub effect on papers' citations". Scientometrics. 127 (1): 99–126. doi:10.1007/s11192-020-03806-w. S2CID 234003081. Archived from the original on 26 July 2023. Retrieved 26 July 2023.
  9. Rumfitt, Alison (November 25, 2022). "In defence of Z-Library and book piracy - Pirated ebook site Z-Library was the bane of many authors' and publishers' existence, however Alison Rumitt – herself an author – isn't celebrating its loss". Dazed. Archived from the original on November 25, 2022. Retrieved November 25, 2022.
  10. "Legal questions raised over links to Sci-Hub". www.insidehighered.com. Archived from the original on 2023-01-10. Retrieved 2021-02-14.
  11. "What happened when a professor was accused of sharing his own work on his website". Archived from the original on 2022-05-14. Retrieved 2021-02-15.
  12. "Meet the Guy Behind the Libgen Torrent Seeding Movement". TorrentFreak. Archived from the original on 13 May 2021. Retrieved 23 October 2020.
  13. "Archivists Want to Make Sci-Hub 'Un-Censorable'". Gizmodo. Archived from the original on 25 December 2022. Retrieved 13 June 2021.
  14. ""Anna's Archive" Opens the Door to Z-Library and Other Pirate Libraries". TorrentFreak. Archived from the original on 19 November 2022. Retrieved 8 January 2023.
  15. "'Shadow Libraries' Are Moving Their Pirated Books to The Dark Web After Fed Crackdowns". VICE. Archived from the original on 30 November 2022. Retrieved 8 January 2023.
  16. "A piece of Web3 tech helps banned books through the Great Firewall's cracks". South China Morning Post. 16 April 2022. Archived from the original on 29 November 2022. Retrieved 8 January 2023.
  17. Staff (January 2023). "Anna's Archive - About". Anna's Archive. Retrieved January 3, 2022.
  18. Staff (January 2023). "Anna's Archive - Software". Anna's Archive. Archived from the original on January 17, 2023. Retrieved January 4, 2022.
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