Shadow Libraries - Anna's Archive, Library Genesis, Sci-Hub, Z-Library, and more

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moocow said:
Copyright cultists should just be set on fire so we can be done with it.
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Sometimes people survive fire. Guillotines are better because they kill everybody equally.
guillotine go swashhhh.jpeg

No baptists waking you up in a crave down the road after the drugs wear off and then taking you to Wales.
 
I do apprec?ate people archiving books so I don?t have to give money to faggots that don?t deserve it, but do half the peop?e who upload on libgen even check the shit they?re uploading? I swear ev?ry fucking sentence has some kind of err?r, which is easy to let your mind correct while you?re reading, but it a?ds up.
 
Lord of the Goys said:
I do apprec?ate people archiving books so I don?t have to give money to faggots that don?t deserve it, but do half the peop?e who upload on libgen even check the shit they?re uploading? I swear ev?ry fucking sentence has some kind of err?r, which is easy to let your mind correct while you?re reading, but it a?ds up.
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Probably some encoding issue, or OCR. I've seen this in text on adslop sites that have novels on HTML, but not usually on the books I actually download (often epubs of cookbooks or other practical non-fiction somebody wants, since the PDFs are slow on slow tablets).

TorrentFreak: German Pirate Site Blockades Target Anna’s Archive, FitGirl and RPG Only (archive)
Germany's voluntary pirate site blocking scheme was overhauled this year, adding proper judicial oversight. In recent weeks, the first court orders were signed, resulting in blockades of shadow library Anna's Archive and gaming portal RPG Only. These blockades were announced weeks after they were first implemented, which resulted in confusing situations. FitGirl Repacks was also blocked, but in this case, the order was not issued by a court.
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Reuters: Apple sued over use of copyrighted books to train Apple Intelligence (archive)
Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen Macknik, professors at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University in Brooklyn, New York, told the court in a proposed class action on Thursday that Apple used illegal "shadow libraries" of pirated books to train Apple Intelligence.
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TorrentFreak: Google Removed 749 Million Anna’s Archive URLs from its Search Results (archive)
Popular shadow library Anna's Archive has become a top target for copyright holders. In just three years, publishers and authors have prompted Google to remove 749 million of the site's URLs from its search results. Despite this immense takedown campaign, which accounts for 5% of all URLs reported to Google on copyright grounds, the site itself remains easily discoverable through the search engine.
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Not a big deal since you can't trust Google to deliver consistent pirate site (or any other kind of) results, and you should be searching directly at Anna's Archive. I'd be more mad about smaller sites not appearing in results, like "onlinereadfreenovel.com", which could appear if you type the name of a book plus a typical phrase like "read free online".
 
The Mass Shooter Ron Soye said:
TorrentFreak: Google Removed 749 Million Anna’s Archive URLs from its Search Results (archive)


Not a big deal since you can't trust Google to deliver consistent pirate site (or any other kind of) results, and you should be searching directly at Anna's Archive. I'd be more mad about smaller sites not appearing in results, like "onlinereadfreenovel.com", which could appear if you type the name of a book plus a typical phrase like "read free online".
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Saw this article earlier, was going to post but its really just a nothingburger, considering in the article itself it shows how trivial it is to still find results for the site on google search lmao, they basically just paid lip service to copyright holders and called it a day.

I suppose the point is that this is trying to deter normies from finding the site, which honestly would be nice actually but its not particularly hard to find in any capacity.
 
Tremolo said:
Saw this article earlier, was going to post but its really just a nothingburger, considering in the article itself it shows how trivial it is to still find results for the site on google search lmao, they basically just paid lip service to copyright holders and called it a day.
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The scale of it is pretty enormous. Billions and billions of takedowns served, and Anna's Archive is 1 in 20 of all takedowns since 2012 despite coming online in November 2022.

I post most of the shadow library TorrentFreak articles no matter how minor. If I don't, I'm at least editing it into the list in the OP.
 
TorrentFreak: Anna’s Archive ‘WorldCat Scrape’ Lawsuit Drops $5M Claim, Pivots to Takedown Tactic (archive) (mega)
OCLC is no longer looking for millions in damages from Anna's Archive, but has adopted a tactical "takedown" strategy instead. In a renewed motion for default judgment, the organization requests a permanent injunction, to restrain the shadow library from sharing WorldCat data. OCLC believes that an injunction would motivate third-party intermediaries to pull the plug on the site's infrastructure.
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R00T said:
Libgen covered me so much in college. it's a tough line to walk, but content in the realm of academia should be free to access for knowledge's sake and the pursuit of understanding alone. The fact it is restricted so heavily does so much damage to you middle and lower classes. I get there has to be some money in it, but maybe that should be reflected in funding rather than bucking the cost onto the individual.
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robert maxwell's is the person responsible for this. also a bunch of his kids were involved in search engines in the early internet days. you might have heard the name ghislaine maxwell because she ran the reddit /r/news subreddit until 2019. oh, and she was the epstein lady. can't forget that. probably less important than the other stuff, though!
 
Anna's Blog: We finished the Chinese release (archive) (mega)
We’re happy to announce that the Chinese release which we started 2 years ago (this month) is finally finished. After much work by our group of Chinese volunteers, we finally managed to release and integrate the DuXiu and other Chinese collections. We’d like to give a quick overview of the different subcollections, and the work involved.
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The books from Duxiu have long been pirated on the Chinese internet. Usually they are being sold for less than a dollar by resellers. They are typically distributed using the Chinese equivalent of Google Drive, which has often been hacked to allow for more storage space. Some technical details can be found here and here.

Though the books have been semi-publicly distributed, it is quite difficult to obtain them in bulk. We had this high on our TODO-list, and allocated multiple months of full-time work for it. However, in late 2023 an incredible, amazing, and talented volunteer reached out to us, telling us they had done all this work already — at great expense. They shared the full collection with us, without expecting anything in return, except the guarantee of long-term preservation. Truly remarkable.
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Belisarius Cawl said:
That's why I advise you that, if you are having a hard time finding things, always remember Google is typically your best option for most things, but still never your only option. Yandex and DuckDuckGo have sometimes helped me a lot with jacking off my penis and watching pirated movies finding solid academic textbooks and papers.
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The fact that they hadn't neutered it years ago, with or without the presence of a court order, shows that the cat-and-mouse game is going well for the mouse.
 
The Mass Shooter Ron Soye said:
The fact that they hadn't neutered it years ago, with or without the presence of a court order, shows that the cat-and-mouse game is going well for the mouse.
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I'm a little whitepilled about a few things, not just piracy. YouTube (a Google service) has gotten to the point that they now have to allow pretty much open RAYCISSCISS content creators on their platform, because they see the writing on the wall of how society is just getting MO' 'N' MO' RAYCISSCISS. This was not the case even a few years ago. Also, every time I see the modern-day minstrel show of niggers getting arrested on bodycams, the comments are always extremely based.
"If you're feeling like shit, take more white pills!"
 
Belisarius Cawl said:
I'm a little whitepilled about a few things, not just piracy. YouTube (a Google service) has gotten to the point that they now have to allow pretty much open RAYCISSCISS content creators on their platform, because they see the writing on the wall of how society is just getting MO' 'N' MO' RAYCISSCISS. This was not the case even a few years ago. Also, every time I see the modern-day minstrel show of niggers getting arrested on bodycams, the comments are always extremely based.
"If you're feeling like shit, take more white pills!"
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I've caught a few automated "warnings" for posting based comments on some of those videos, but never a ban. Though I do think I'm shadowbanned (at least on some channels), as when I happen across a video I'd watched months prior and spot one of my comments, it has zero interactions/responses even amid hundreds or thousands of other comments that all have thumbs-ups or replies. Not that I care. It's still in Google's fucking databases. Train your AIs on that shit, you fucking assholes!
 
Anna's Blog: Backing up Spotify (archive) (mega)
We backed up Spotify (metadata and music files). It’s distributed in bulk torrents (~300TB), grouped by popularity.

This release includes the largest publicly available music metadata database with 256 million tracks and 186 million unique ISRCs.

It’s the world’s first “preservation archive” for music which is fully open (meaning it can easily be mirrored by anyone with enough disk space), with 86 million music files, representing around 99.6% of listens.

Anna’s Archive normally focuses on text (e.g. books and papers). We explained in “The critical window of shadow libraries” that we do this because text has the highest information density. But our mission (preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture) doesn’t distinguish among media types. Sometimes an opportunity comes along outside of text. This is such a case.
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46338339 (archive) (mega)

They got into the music business.

TorrentFreak: A DMCA “Bot War”: Google Search Processed 5 Billion Takedown Requests in 2025 (archive) (mega)
Similarly, rightsholders also rely on their own ‘bots.’ This definitely applies to Link-Busters, the takedown partner of many major book publishers and the leading sender of takedown notices by far.

In 2025 alone, Link-Busters was good for more than 3.2 billion reported URLs, which dwarfs all other senders.
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Not surprisingly, the most targeted domain names are also related to publishing. In fact, the top three domains are all linked to shadow library search engine Anna’s Archive, which has hundreds of millions of URLs flagged.

In terms of accuracy, Link-Busters has a good track record. The company appears to be strictly focused on a subset of problematic sites, mostly shadow libraries.
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Android Authority: The internet just made a 300TB copy of Spotify! (Updated: Spotify reaction) (archive)
Update: December 22, 2025 (4:51 AM ET): Spotify has shared the following statement with Android Authority addressing Anna’s Archive’s claims of scraping the platform at scale.

An investigation into unauthorized access identified that a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM to access some of the platform’s audio files. We are actively investigating the incident.
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Spotify’s statement stops short of confirming the scale described by Anna’s Archive. While the platform says only “some” of its audio files were accessed, Anna’s Archive claims it was able to archive music representing 99.6% of all listens on Spotify.

At this point, it’s unclear how much of the platform was actually affected, what Spotify’s investigation will uncover, or whether any legal action will follow.
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TorrentFreak: Anna’s Archive Backed Up Spotify, Plans to Release 300TB Music Archive (archive) (mega)
For now, the metadata release is being shared by more than 200 people, which means that there is plenty of interest. And we suspect that this will pick up further when the music archives are released.
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Ars Technica: World’s largest shadow library made a 300TB copy of Spotify’s most streamed songs (archive)
 
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Here's some MSM coverage:

Spotify Music Library Scraped by Pirate Activist Group
Billboard (archive.ph)
By Mitchell Peters
2025-12-22 16:18:56GMT
This private information is unavailable to guests due to policies enforced by third-parties.
 
Maori Kiwifruit Growers said:
So this might be more for the other thread but do shadow libraries exist for other media formats (movies, software, games, music that's not on Spotify, 3d prints etc). I know they exist everywhere online but i mean in the way annas archive operates for example.

Yes I know it's a baby level question.
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I don't follow the 3D printing scene. DEFCAD still exists, but for mostly firearm-related files. The Pirate Bay launched a "physibles" category that still exists, but looks completely neglected. There's probably better sites out there for this, but I don't know what they are.

I don't think anything for movies/TV/software/games/music is approaching the rigor and openness of Anna's Archive, like paying bounties for datasets and telling you in autistic detail where everything is coming from, even though most services (like pirate streaming sites) are also technically front-ends like AA. The folx behind AA mean serious business. Feel free to correct me.

Anna's Archive offers high-speed access to its full collection via SFTP to groups training large language models (LLMs) in exchange for large contributions of money or data. It said it provided such access to about 30 companies as of January 2025, primarily based in China, including both LLM companies and data brokers. DeepSeek's VL model was partly trained on ebook data from the site.
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Small detail, there has been no explanation at all given for the name. Could be a troon thing, inside joke, or simple misdirection:
https://annas-archive.org/faq (archive)
https://old.reddit.com/r/Annas_Archive/comments/1f6h74r/im_curious_actually_who_is_anna/ (archive)
 
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