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Comment by bityard | Hacker News Reader

On the modern internet, you don't need to know who runs it in order to shut it down. They already have a court order to pull down all of the known domains and the registrars have 20 days to comply.

If that doesn't work, many countries have systems in place where copyright holders can tell ISPs not to let their customers access certain links. (Either via blocking DNS requests or null-routing the IP/netblock.)

Serious question: Why aren't Libgen, Annas-Archive, and others operating solely as an onion service on TOR?

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They're not on TOR because normal people aren't on TOR. We've had various ways to distribute files with almost no way of getting caught for decades, but they're all a pain in the ass to use, requiring at the very least a native client program to access, so most people won't ever use them.

Tor is part of the problem. It pretends to be an anti-censorship/privacy tool, which is kind of true but mostly in the sense that it let's you surf the clear-web, which is a design flaw that three-letter agencies explout all the time. Hidden services are a second class citizen that has a high enough barrier of entry that only pirates and pedophiles remember they are even a thing most of the time. If it really believed in its mission, it would radically redesign itself.

That aside, there really isn't anything stopping apps from building in Tor, or ideally I2P, to lower the barrier of entry to a truly anonymous network. The end user shouldn't even have to know about it. But the profit motive is to not even bother because it might make apps slower and 99 percent of users don't care.

We can't enumerate these things (for obvious reasons), but I would be shocked if the overwhelming majority of onion services active any any given moment were anything other than nerds who need quick and easy NAT punching. By traffic volume, we already know the majority is just Facebook's onion services, then presumably followed by the NYT, BBC, etc.

I agree that more applications should make (transparent) use of them, but the whole "darkweb" aspect has always been overstated.

> Hidden services are a second class citizen that has a high enough barrier of entry

Second class how? I open the tor browser, I paste the link, I go there.

Even simpler, advertise your onion domain by including a Onion-Location header in the clear-net site’s response.

The Tor Browser automatically detects and offers to redirect you there. No need to memorize the onion domain.

This was the original purpose of the alt-svc[1] header, although it's rarely used for that purpose and instead used for upgrading clients to QUIC.

[1] https://www.jonaharagon.com/posts/securing-services-with-tor...

That sounds like a pretty nice place to add malware to a site once it's hacked and avoid detection.

You can't just lay out a supposed fact that 99% of users don't care about speed without providing some sort of citation...

I think you misread, I read it as 99% of users don't care about anonymity

> Why aren't … operating solely as an onion service on TOR?

> They’re not on TOR because

Any downsides to being available on many decentralized overlay networks in addition to plain https, other than (compute/net/human) resources?

no advertising $

Do they even have advertising normally?

yes i believe so

Anna doesn't have any advertising. Their income is purely driven off donations, most of which are part of subscription packages that offer faster downloads.

yeah meant more libgen, which i believe some instances have ads.

anna's has "donations for speed" and dark pattern hide the links to the fast external websites

I believe this should work: <http://genotypeinczgrxr.onion/>

Via: <https://old.reddit.com/r/libgen/comments/mqo0sg/tor_onion_po...>.

The sites are ON Tor. They were not exclusively on Tor for reasons others have stated: most people don't have Tor or know how to use it, though I suspect that situation may evolve.

Doesn't z-lib have a kind of hybrid approach where some things are available on clearnet but for certain account-based features it's TOR?

"The Web" requires a native client program to access, yet over time has gained ever wider adoption as "most people" come to see the value and realize it's in their interest to do what it takes to gain access. We need to be evangelizing secure protocols in the same manner, especially as the insecure/centralizing protocols become ever more censored.

The Web hasn't required anything beyond what's installed for nearly the entirety of my life, and when it wasn't already there, someone would toss a CD at me in the parking lot and I'd be golden

You hang out in unusual parking lots.

Talkin AOL baby!

Edit: But admittedly I do hang out in some unusual parking lots.

Maybe start handing out TOR Browser discs at those parking lots. Be the change you want to see.

That sounds like a depths of winter type project

I use libgen on tor.

> I use libgen on tor.

I believe the context here is the GGP's comment about using Tor Onion services. Are you using those to access libgen?

Is this [0] not exclusively for the Tor browser? It states immediately below (on this [1] page) to "Make sure you're using Tor", and will only open in the Tor browser. I've actually used LibGen with Tor before, and treat it like the library not making ones borrowing history public knowledge

[0] http://libgenfrialc7tguyjywa36vtrdcplwpxaw43h6o63dmmwhvavo5r...

[1] http://library.lol/fiction/33618E71454C5165A39564CB861466AB

There are obvious workaround for all of the things you mention.

> Why aren't Libgen, Annas-Archive, and others operating solely as an onion service on TOR?

Probably because that would make it less accessible and more slow.

We're are talking about PDFs. A few mb usually. The speed hit of tor is probably fine. Also its a text book. Most users probably find some download latency acceptable.

I imagine the real reason is normies dont have tor installed.

Not a fan of the term “normies” but as a Tor “normie” isn’t Tor traffic identifiable and wouldn’t using it make it easier for authorities to focus on you?

Yes, but in most western juridsictions using tor is acceptable so that is fine.

There are ways to disguise traffic (onfuscated bridges) but those are always going to be an arms race.

You only need a dynamic-DNS system on the hidden service. Then you can avoid the regulatory capture of registrars and host in a friendly country.

For now. Right now DNS blocking is used because it works for 95% of people. Once it doesn't, they'll start demanding more serious means of blocking.

I'm surprised that didn't happen yet because DNS blocking is so ineffective. It's basically just akin to removing a business from the phone book or yellow pages.

AA is purely an indexer, the performance hit would be more felt during the actual downloads.

Like when they shut down The Pirate Bay in 2006 (and again every year since)?

China proved the Great Firewall was possible. It is only a matter of time before every nation builds it for the benefit of their ruling classes.

> China proved the Great Firewall was possible.

Technologically? Maybe. Practically? I'm posting this while using uncensored Internet from within China, and not because I'm going out of my way to evade any blocking.

The GFW is more like the government put out an umbrella, but nothing is really forcing anyone to stand under it. Five steps and you're out. No doubt they could change that tomorrow if they so wished, but there are hurdles other than technical ones.

In my case I'm simply roaming using my German SIM-card, but plenty of VPNs would work too. They can detect and block these and do with certain ones, but for many they just... don't.

Isn't it the case that foreigners can just apply to be exempted from the GFW? I remember people mentioning that to me online in the 2010s who were semi-long term living in China.

I've never heard of such a thing. Businesses maybe and not residential? Businesses getting a carve-out for their network would be pretty standard.

Interesting though, I'll ask around.

The way I heard it was individuals could apply too with a valid reason and one guy I knew online several years ago said “I’m a foreigner who wants to access my own country’s internet” was a valid reason. May have changed since Covid for all I know he left around that time.

We already see mass censorship of legal speech via centralization and deplatforming, particularly via Cloudflare (which continues to happily host CSAM, animal SAM, and various other genuinely illegal websites). It is the unfortunate reality that the Internet will become various internets.

I don't think that's necessary as app stores are already regional and easy to put additional restrictions on, and desktop internet usage is slowly being overtaken by app usage. And who knows, maybe even Windows 15 will only allow software downloaded through Safe and Verified(tm) app stores.

They are available over IPFS and you can download their datadump via Torrent

Their datadump strategy is questionable. You end up needing perhaps 1 book for each shard. I guess they are made by sorting the ISBN or some other numerical field and then grouped until they reach a certain size. It is a bit annoying to put the shard of interest to download in your torrent client, pause it, figure out which book is the one you are after by looking at the ids, instruct your torrent client to only download that book.

My understanding was that's meant to be a way "ordinary people" () can contribute to the project by seeding one or more torrents with a part of their archive contents, to try and achieve a sort of "distributed backup", and it's not meant as a way for final users to get that one book they need.

() that is, people that can't run a IPFS node or other advanced options due to their limited space/network/skills/money.

> Why aren't Libgen, Annas-Archive, and others operating solely as an onion service on TOR?

I’d assume is maximizing access to genpop

TOR comes with it's own baggage.

They wouldn't be as accessible to the average user.

> Serious question: Why aren't Libgen, Annas-Archive, and others operating solely as an onion service on TOR?

I think hosting in country outside of US jurisdiction (Russia?) and being accessed through VPN is more consumer friendly solution.

Does TOR still allow anyone to run relay / exit nodes? It's only safe inasmuch as security agencies want to keep using their access when they need to.

In this case it's not the privacy you need from ToR but access so it doesn't really matter if the NSA runs the exit nodes because you're not exiting.

That's irrelevant if you are talking about hidden services.

And mostly irrelavent for clearnet in a world where everything is https.

Good luck convincing a russian registrar to comply with US court orders!

Why should they? They are also on tor.

Post the Anna's Archive tor link and I will send you 5 USDC

It seems that you are correct, there is none. I thought that they did have one.. perhaps a book mirror only.

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