Free Culture - Shadow libraries

Until the mid 20 century knowledge and its access was viewed as a public good and not one to commodify. A self-evident truth eroded by the infamous Robert Maxwell and its venture in scientific publishing Pergamon Press where he courted scientists with lavish gifts and parties enticing them to sign exclusive contracts. He marketed his publications as purportedly prestigious and pioneered the model of paid subscriptions where fast-paced publishing surrounded by controversies and novelties became the norm to the detriment of long term studies and peer review.

Before his death his company was sold to the Goliath in academic publishing Elsevier. A company notorious for having perfected his egregious business model; forcing universities to stop subscribing to less popular journals and hiking the price of their own publications.

The digitalization of information was presented as a unique opportunity in history, the democratization of knowledge. An achievable goal if not for the unilateral decision of the greedy publishers like Elsevier (REXL $90.65 billions), Springer Nature ($5.59 billions), John Wiley & Sons ($2.88 billions), Taylor & Francis (Informa $15.14 billions), and SAGE Publishing. The five main culprits conspired to enclose knowledge and already control more than half of academic literature despite bringing no value to the creation and dissemination of knowledge. An access limited through paywalls and mafia-like tactics toward those daring to challenge their dominance.

Research is done by scientists thanks to public founds. But have to rely on them to publish and access relevant sources. This problem affects everybody, people in the global north and even more disproportionately so those in the global south. The situation is so dire that even research institutions in developed countries cannot keep up. Open access is often presented as an answer but fail to solve anything only displacing the cost onto researchers who have to pay a hefty sum to get their papers published.

In an effort to combat this monopoly shadows libraries have been created as digital repositories of knowledge, a revival of the самиздат (samizdat) culture born in the 40s in the Soviet Union to avoid state censorship. The most prominent among them as of November 2025 are Library Genesis, Z-Library, Sci-Hub and Anna's archive.

Library Genesis (Libgen) created in 2008 contains 6.8 millions (97.6TB) records libgen, 7.8 millions (14.2 TB) in fiction, 1.7 millions (3.1 TB) in Russian fiction, 89.4 millions (83.5 TB) scientific articles, 1.6 millions (55.2 TB) magazines, 2.9 millions (135.7 TB) comics, 1 millions (2 TB) standards.

Z-Library a spin-off of Libgen formerly known as BookFinder created in 2009 contained 11.6 millions books and 84.8 millions articles before being shut down in November 2022 and getting revived later on.

Sci-Hub created by Alexandra Elbakyan in 2011 provides free access to 88 millions of scientific papers but without any new uploads since 2020.

Anna's archive created after the shutdown of Z-Library is an open source search engine for shadow libraries aiming at preserving all books in existence and making them accessible to everyone. It contains the records of 59.6 millions books and 95.5 millions papers (1.1 PB). No copyrighted materials are held only metadata aggregated from several sources; some easily mirrored in bulk other requiring scrapping.

Perpetual lawsuits ported by publishing companies (i.a Elsevier, Pearson, McGraw Hill, Macmillan, Cengage), multiple tens of millions of dollars fines, forced websites shutdowns and arrests fragilize these libraries.

For more resilience, multiple technologies have been adopted; website access through Tor or I2P, file distribution using peer-to-peer protocols like BitTorrent and InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), and a real time monitor called Open SLUM.

The future of these libraries depends on us all. Let's spread the word, upload missing books and papers, help with infrastructure maintenance and growth, contribute financially for the long term viability of these projects and fight the legal battles. Until the day knowledge becomes liberated we all are Ana.