LibGen embargo lifted

[Eugen Leitl]

This is what a little bird just tweeted me.

Notice that I'm not associated with the project in any way.
I don't know the people involved. I have no idea who or where they are.
I'm just a fan. Just as with the funny little bird, don't attach my
name to it.

----------------------snip--------------------------------------

(please strip any personally indentifying information when 
redistributing -- thanks)

Now that the seeding has gone live I can tell what this is about.

Library Genesis, an 832 k volume scientific/technical library --
consider it the new virtual library of Alexandria, if you wish --
has set up a dedicated system for seeding in order to encourage
people to distribute the entire corpus and set up local mirrors
(which can be on a private LAN or even on your home NAS, with
a web interface accessible from a wireless tablet device so
that thou dost not anger the Ents).

The torrents are here: ftp://free-books.us.to/repository_torrent/
and also here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3097273/Library%20Genesis/0-832.7z
in one archive in 7zip format.

Notice that each torrent expands into a directory of roughly 10 GBytes.
Unless you have 10 TByte space (spread over multiple volumes) and
can download the whole thing I suggest that people here agree on
a numeric range (~1 TByte storage = ~100 torrents) so that they
at least can pool the data later. I have no idea how long the
seedbox will stay up.

Notice that this alone will give you only a giant pile of files
in directories which are named by their individual md5 hashes.
You will need a web server with PHP and some SQL database and
the sources of LibGen, which are open source and freely available.
There are appliances running from an USB stick under Windows 
though, assuming you feed them the location of the files in
a config file. The souces are sufficiently flexible so that they
can deal with individual ranges of directories on different
volumes -- no need to do it on a giant single RAID. Notice that
the library will function immediately also with plenty data missing,
though latter will result in frustration since you'll likely
run into many dead links.

As you see, they start with r_0000 and go up to r_836000 at the moment.
CAVEAT: Before you fire up your favorite BitTorrent client, please consider 
potential liabilities you'll be exposing yourself to. All IP addresses
in a torrent swarm are public, so if there's something in the torrent somebody
thinks they have the rights for and they think they can persecute in
your jurisdiction -- and with 10 TBytes total, the probability is quite
high -- then don't do it. Things that are right are not necessarily
legal, and vice versa. </IANAL> <-- please take this very seriously

If you think you know people who would want to participate in the 
Great Replication Event of the NeoAlexandria aka LibGen, feel free
to pass on this message.

Notice that a LibGen appliance in higher education centers of the
developing world would be a Very Good Thing indeed, so if you know
people with sufficient funding (a 10 TByte NAS box and a few decent
10" Android tables will probably cost less than 5 kEUR, which is a
steal given that it gives you access to a treasure trove of 
scientific/technical literature) then feel free to pitch them the idea.