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Comment by zinekeller | Hacker News Reader

> China, Cuba, and Russia would be the ideal choices if you're on the run from US authorities.

(this is specific to Z-library)

Russia is out. Some books on the platform directly contradicts government ideals, and it seems that the operators aren't willing to filter it out.

China might be a safe case, but recently they have cared for IP (at least for literary things, industrial processes are another matter) because they have multiple industries that China saw as beneficial (both audiovisual and literacy, including comics) so they could evade US authorities but might get sentenced by Chinese authorities anyway.

I don't know enough about Cuba to comment.

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> Russia is out. Some books on the platform directly contradicts government ideals, and it seems that the operators aren't willing to filter it out.

Any source on this specific claim (ie. not Russian censorship writ large)? I get that Russia is unpopular right now, but is this just conjecture?

Good question. It's not really about the war, it's more its negative perception of LGBT+ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_gay_propaganda_law). This is not speculative, it is currently applicable to children, and as of this comment the Duma is working to expand this to even adults.

Also, generally information critical to the government, information on suicide, information on banned substances (this is the official reason why the Russian Wikipedia is banned), and information on making bombs and adjacent terror-related devices is also controlled, but I believe Z-library (and LibGen) don't host much of it.

Has anything changed over the last six months or so regarding piracy, though?

The last thing I had paid attention to was the Russian government lifting the blocks on RuTracker, the most popular Russian-language torrent site, in reaction to the sanctions—to which RuTracker responded back by blocking Russia on their end [1].

But yeah, in that sense, it would seem that keeping people happy, having access to entertainment, scientific material, etc., and retaliation is more important than the ridiculous anti-LGBT laws right now. Maybe I'm wrong here, but I would think Russia does not pose a massive threat to Z-Lib and LibGen right now.

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[1]: https://torrentfreak.com/rutracker-found-itself-unblocked-in...

> but I believe Z-library (and LibGen) don't host much of it.

Don't believe that is true for libgen, plenty of content critical of Russia, Putin, and also content that will teach you to make bombs on there.

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