In November 2022, Z-Library, the internet’s underground sweetheart of shadow libraries, got yanked out of the digital shadows and dragged into the goddamn spotlight by the United States government. For years, it floated just beneath the surface, dishing out millions of books to anyone who needed them. Broke students. Underpaid teachers. Porn-addicted shitposting degenerates like me. Researchers locked out by paywalls. Whole classrooms in places where textbooks are a luxury. It was the people’s library, stitched together with torrents and defiance.

Then the hammer dropped.

The Department of Justice came in swinging. The FBI showed up with a global buddy-cop lineup of foreign law enforcement. Hundreds of domain names blinked out like lights in a blackout. The feds even snatched two Russian nationals in Argentina, claiming they were the ghostly masterminds behind it all. Just two people, flesh and bone, dragged into the open for handing out knowledge that corporate publishing kept locked behind gold-plated paywalls.

Suddenly, free books became evidence. And giving a damn became a federal issue. The message was unmistakable: access to knowledge, when it bypasses corporate control, would be treated as a criminal act.

At its peak, Z-Library claimed a database of over 13 million books and more than 84 million articles. Users around the world could access everything from obscure philosophy texts and medical journals to fiction, poetry, and educational materials. The site had evolved from a mirror of Library Genesis into a vast archive and branded itself as the world’s largest ebook library.

It pulled in traffic from damn near every country on the planet. Especially in places where buying a book meant skipping a meal or where bookstores didn’t even exist. It was a lifeline wrapped in a ZIP file. And it didn’t give a single shit about copyright law. None. It ran on need, not permission.

To publishers and the big-name authors clinging to their royalty checks, Z-Library wasn’t a library. It was a threat. A digital F-you aimed straight at their paywalls.

To millions of users, it offered something much closer to a public good. In a world where a single textbook can cost more than a week’s wages and research papers are locked behind forty-dollar paywalls, the idea of sharing books freely was not just appealing, it was essential. For independent scholars, low-income students, and autodidacts with no access to institutional libraries, Z-Library was more than a website. It was a vital tool for survival in a deeply unequal system.

The crackdown unfolded quickly. On November 3, 2022, Argentinian authorities arrested Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova at the request of the United States. Days later, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed an indictment charging them with criminal copyright infringement, wire fraud, and money laundering. They were accused of uploading books within hours of release and profiting from donation-based activity that prosecutors framed as illegal commerce. FBI officials painted the pair as pirates exploiting the creative work of others, while the Authors Guild praised the arrests as a landmark victory.

Even so, the takedown left many unanswered questions. For one, Z-Library never fully disappeared. While its main domains were redirected to government-controlled servers, the site remained operational on the dark web. Administrators continued to send out messages and respond to users. This suggested that Napolsky and Ermakova were not the only individuals behind the operation.

Within days, new search engines and mirrors like Anna’s Archive appeared online, preserving the collection and making it clear that the shutdown had failed to stop the flow of information.

The attack on Z-Library was not the first attempt to crush a shadow library, and it likely would not be the last. In previous years, various governments including those in India, France, and the United Kingdom had blocked or seized domains associated with the site. Internet service providers were ordered to restrict access. Publishers filed legal claims across multiple jurisdictions. Each action made it harder to reach the site, but none succeeded in shutting it down completely.

The public statements made by U.S. officials focused on authors’ rights and lost revenue. Yet these same officials offered no solutions for the root causes of piracy. They said nothing about the rising cost of academic journals. They said nothing about the lack of affordable books for students outside wealthy nations. They said nothing about the millions of people who wanted to learn but could not afford to buy access.

For a lot of people, the whole crackdown felt like a sick joke. Copying isn’t stealing. When you copy a book, nothing vanishes. The original stays right where it is. Nothing is lost. Something is shared. In a digital world where making a copy costs exactly zero, scarcity isn’t real. It’s manufactured. Built on locked doors and greed. The gatekeepers call it protection, rake in the cash, and turn anyone who shares into a criminal.

Months after the arrest, reports emerged that Napolsky and Ermakova had escaped house arrest in Argentina. Their whereabouts were unknown, and an Interpol warrant was issued. Meanwhile, U.S. authorities continued seizing domains and targeting infrastructure. Z-Library evolved. It shifted to personal access domains, private distribution systems, and decentralized methods. The people behind it adapted, and so did its users.

Z-Library was not perfect. It operated in legal gray areas. But it filled a need that the formal system refused to address. It offered access where there was none. It provided knowledge without a price tag.

And it asked brought up an important question: who gets to read, and who gets left behind?

Piracy, in this context, was not about greed or laziness. It was a form of resistance. It was a way for the excluded to participate. It was not the opposite of learning. It was learning in spite of a system built to exclude.

As long as the price of knowledge is set higher than what most people can afford, piracy will continue. And it will continue to be justified. Not because it is legal. But because it is necessary.

Inside CRACK99: Xiang Li, Software Piracy, and the Price of Knowledge

In the late 2000s, while most internet users were quietly downloading torrents and cracking Photoshop out of frustration or necessity, a man in Chengdu, China, was doing it bigger, smarter, and far more dangerously—at least in the eyes of the U.S. government.

His name was Xiang Li. Through his website, CRACK99, he distributed cracked versions of some of the most expensive and highly restricted software on Earth.

These were tools used in military engineering, satellite communications, weapons design, and critical aerospace systems. In a world where powerful knowledge was locked behind licensing agreements and pricing designed for billion-dollar governments, Li offered access for a price nearly anyone could afford.

From 2008 to 2011, Li made CRACK99 a reliable black-market marketplace, one that netted an estimated $100 million in sales. His inventory, investigators later said, was valued at over $1 billion.

He did not code these tools himself or crack the protections. They were pirated elsewhere. He simply redistributed them, turning scarcity into availability.

His customers weren’t criminal masterminds. They were engineers, small business owners, students, and even U.S. government employees. Among them was a NASA engineer and a contractor who worked on radar software for Marine One, the helicopter used by the President of the United States.

That revelation rattled national security agencies. It meant classified systems were being developed, at least in part, using pirated tools. It also meant the official channels were either too expensive or too inaccessible, even to insiders.

When access to knowledge is locked behind six-figure software licenses, people will find another way in.

In 2010, Homeland Security and the Defense Criminal Investigation Service launched an undercover investigation led by David Locke Hall, a former U.S. Navy intelligence officer and federal prosecutor. For eighteen months, agents posed as buyers, gained Li’s trust, and arranged a face-to-face meeting in Saipan, a U.S. territory in the Pacific.

Li flew to the island expecting a lucrative expansion of his business. He arrived with his mother-in-law and son, unaware he had entered U.S. jurisdiction. At a beachfront hotel, Li handed over cracked software and 20GB of stolen data. When he confirmed he was the man behind CRACK99, federal agents arrested him.

That moment, Hall later said, was the most dangerous part of the entire operation. You never know how someone will react when the illusion collapses. Li, wearing a Hawaiian shirt, did not look like a criminal. But appearances can be deceiving.

After his arrest, Hall tried to soften the impact on Li’s family. He took the boy out for ice cream while agents searched the hotel room. He didn’t feel sorry for Li in that moment, but he did feel for the child, caught in something he couldn’t understand.

Li was extradited to the mainland and charged in Delaware. In 2013, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and copyright infringement. He was sentenced to twelve years in federal prison; one of the longest sentences for software piracy in American history.

While law enforcement saw the case as a vital win against cybercrime, others see a deeper question: If software is priced out of reach, and if even government scientists are turning to piracy, is the problem really the pirate—or the system?

Li didn’t set out to sabotage anything. He simply didn’t believe that tools to build machines or simulate flight should be locked away behind institutional gates. He didn’t care who his customers were, and that scared people. But it also said something damning about how modern knowledge is managed: access to it is a privilege, not a right.

Xiang Li sits in prison, not as a hacker or spy, but as someone who cracked open the paywall and asked why it was there to begin with.

I removed the link to the article, since the article is on Medium, and Medium is becoming a shithole too. So here is the article. It was written by JA Westenberg and she's at https://www.joanwestenberg.com/

Subscription payments are the best thing that ever happened to software companies. And they’re arguably the worst thing that ever happened to their customers.

When I started as an aspiring digital artist in the early 2000s, saving up to purchase software like Adobe Photoshop felt like an investment — once bought, it was mine to use indefinitely. I remember putting away dollars from my paper route to buy my first copy as a kid, already dreaming about my future as a creator.

Later, as a teenager working at McDonald’s, I repeated the ritual of patient saving until I could finally purchase music production software such as Ableton Live. Owning those tools outright meant using them freely without worrying about ongoing costs. My creative output wasn’t bound to what I could afford month-to-month.

Now, companies like Adobe solely offer subscriptions — monthly fees and essentially renting in perpetuity. We no longer own our software; we pay a licensing fee.

This gives us access to regular updates, but it also means the sword of Damocles hangs over creatives — miss a payment, lose access. The freedom of creation I once relished has been supplanted by nagging financial anxiety. I miss the days when the tools felt like mine, not someone else’s borrowed goods, and when I didn’t open up a tool and wonder how much longer I’d be able to keep using it.

The Drawbacks for Customers Here’s the drawback. If I live as long as I want, paying for Photoshop every month will be very, very bloody expensive.

Yes, subscriptions provide convenience and access to varied services and products. But convenience just isn’t enough.

Psychologically, subscriptions drive overconsumption. Our paychecks are eaten away in advance before we realise how many 30-day free trials and monthly tithes we’ve committed ourselves to. And while the subscriptions seem small enough on paper, their cumulative cost is straining the budget for consumers and creatives.

We’re told repeatedly that it’s just the price of one coffee a month, but the combined cost of every single tool, service, app and game demanding one coffee a month becomes the equivalent of paying for enough caffeine to poison even the strongest constitution.

The proliferation of subscription services has led to increasing fragmentation of content. As platforms vie for customer attention, consumers confront myriad fragmented options, each requiring an individual subscription. This results in higher costs for accessing content and a disempowering user experience of juggling multiple platforms and subscriptions. The promised convenience of subscriptions is eroded, leaving customers questioning the true benefits.

It’s easy to understand why company after company is shifting their model. The allure of stability is compelling, and subscription payment models provide just that for businesses. Rather than relying on sporadic one-time purchases, companies can enjoy consistent, predictable revenue streams month after month thanks to loyal subscribers. This stable financial base allows businesses to plan for and invest in future growth, pleasing investors and looking good on paper. But that stability is hardly a victory for users who just want good software and aren’t particularly interested in quarterly earnings reports.

Customer loyalty is the holy grail for companies, and in theory, subscriptions foster (aka coerce) enduring relationships with customers, reducing the risk of losing them to competitors. This is achieved through the “lock-in effect,” where the convenience and perceived value of continuing a subscription discourages customers from seeking alternatives.

But instead of using the foundation of a subscription to cultivate long-term relationships and capitalize on increased customer lifetime value, companies treat users like a Sure Thing, taking them for granted and adding little in terms of value to justify the monthly fee.

There’s a popular argument that subscription payment models championed entrepreneurs and startups, levelling the playing field in an industry historically dominated by major players. It allows smaller companies to enter the marketplace with minimal upfront costs and directly compete with industry giants. But when all these startups want to do is sell more subscription services, it starts to seem at least a little Ponzi-esque.

And then there’s the unfortunate reality that when the economy is tanking, rents are going up, housing is unattainable, food is an arm and a leg, and it’s too expensive to put petrol in the car, more than a few users are going to look at the laundry list of adorably vowel-averse SaaS startups they keep throwing their money at and ask whether they actually need them. There’s a perfectly good email app that comes pre-installed on their phones. The same goes for the To-Do list and Notes apps. At some point, the subscription creep stops making sense.

The ongoing commitment of subscriptions is a massive burden, limiting our flexibility to adapt our spending as needs change. This financial load becomes a significant barrier to achieving financial well-being. We’re stuck in a subscription payment hamster wheel. And something is going to have to give.

Companies recognizing the potential drawbacks of subscriptions have started innovating within the model. Some offer flexible subscription options, allowing customers to pay for services or products on a usage basis. Others are exploring bundled subscriptions, providing diverse content or services at a reduced cost. These approaches address customer concerns while maintaining business benefits by prioritising customer value and flexibility.

But they’re still dodging around one simple fact. The best way for consumers to access software is to buy an app that does what they need and then choose whether or not to upgrade to the next version later. It’s a model that doesn’t require a spreadsheet of monthly expenses to wrangle alongside gas, electricity and medical bills. Although I’m sure there’s a subscription-based app to make it all easier. Roughly the cost of a coffee a month?

This is an article on sci-hub, but I'd be happy to put it somewhere else more fediverse-ish if you all have any ideas where to do that.

Kopimism is a modern parody-religion Piracy Movement that treats information as sacred and believes copying and sharing it is a duty.

It began in Sweden and blends digital rights activism with a unique moral system built around creativity, collaboration, and freedom.

Kopimists don’t worship a "god" but follow principles like respecting privacy and remixing knowledge to improve the world.