Z-Library, known as the electronic library, recently announced an upgrade to its mirror site infrastructure. Now anyone can create a custom-branded, login-only mirror site based on Z-Library. The data hosted by the mirror site is still obtained from the main site and the latest book database. In return, if users donate cryptocurrency through the mirror site, Z-Library will provide the mirror site with 20% of the donation remuneration.
To deal with domain name and server seizure issues:
Z-Library currently hosts tens of millions of books and academic articles that can be downloaded for free. It is obvious that most of these contents are subject to copyright risks. Therefore, in the past 10 years, the website has seized multiple domain names and servers, and even its two core operators were arrested (but ran away during extradition and disappeared since then). However, the remaining team of the website still operates Z-Library anonymously around the world.
However, frequent domain name seizures and server seizures are also very difficult for Z-Library, so now Z-Library is preparing to mobilize the power of the community to call on everyone to establish mirror sites. Mirror sites can choose to enable login access, and only logged-in users can access the website and obtain content. Mirror site operators can also customize the brand trademark and no longer use the Z-Library icon, that is, the content is still Z-Library, but the website does not seem to have anything to do with Z-Library.
This approach can add a large number of Z-Library mirror sites in a short period of time and ensure that more users can obtain books and academic articles for free. From the perspective of Z-Library’s free spirit, this can continue to promote knowledge sharing, and the difficulty of rights protection for copyright agencies will increase significantly in the future. After all, massive mirror site domain names are not easy to discover, and the legal process is too long and costly for copyright agencies.
20% remuneration and mirror site legal risks:
In order to encourage community users to build white-label mirror sites, Z-Library will provide 20% donation remuneration to mirror site operators. That is, when users visit the mirror site and pay cryptocurrency donations to the cryptocurrency donation links provided by the mirror site, Z-Library will provide 20% donation remuneration to the corresponding mirror site operators (of course, for white-label mirror sites, donation income will be very low unless the number of users is large enough).
However, there will be clear legal risks in building a white label mirror site. Users using their own identity information to register domain names and purchase servers to build white label mirror sites means that any content on the website is the responsibility of the operator, and any legal risks incurred will be the responsibility of the operator. Therefore, it is inappropriate for most users to build such a white label mirror site.