she/her
Stop calling everyone a “skeptic” and call them what they are: deniers. Anti-science, fact resistant deniers. Calling people germ-theory skeptics, or climate skeptics, or vaccine skeptics, and so on and so on, makes it sound like there’s an honest scientific debate going on
Several things can be true at once. North Korea is absolutely a totalitarian dictatorship, where no one reasonable would choose to live on their own accords. But also, governments lie, there’s a lot of propaganda about north Korea, and defectors especially are not the trustworthy sources we like to pretend.
You’re right, and I’m sorry if I came over as condescending. The thing is, with projects like these, you need to front load a lot of the safety concerns if you are going to be the one actually hosting the content. It’d be an easier entry to contribute to existing structures, staying more low-key and learning along the way. Many established projects are open-source and need programmers and hackers to help improve and secure their codebases, for example.
That said, if you wanted to start something of your own, I think Anna’s blog is a nice starting point, before you delve into the technical nitty-gritty:
https://annas-archive.org/blog/blog-how-to-become-a-pirate-archivist.html
https://annas-archive.org/blog/how-to-run-a-shadow-library.html
Then, for the actual hosting process, much depends on the stack you use. Never pay for anything in a way that can be traced, which basically only leaves cash or anonymous crypto like Monero. Don’t use any account names, emails, passwords, etc that you’ve ever used before. Never, ever go boasting to strangers, or even worse, friends, about what you’re doing. Do all the standard things of hardening your servers, but always plan around some or all of them being shut down it seized. Even “bulletproof hosting” providers get raided every once in a while. That means decentralization, and don’t put convenience over safety.
Now, while shadow libraries and other forms of media piracies certainly are sought-after targets, you’re likely not going to be anyone’s number one priority, while there’s still rings of child abusers and terrorists on the web. But once you reach a certain size, state actors will come after you, like they did after z-lib a while ago. I don’t have any comprehensive guides on Opsec (and I’m no expert on it, by any measure), but most of it boils down to common sense and keeping your mouth shut, anyways. Most people that get busted don’t have missed some technical vulnerability, but because they’ve talked about their illegal projects on accounts linked to their real name, or something similarly trivial.
Becoming a provider (on any significant scale) should be treated like a second job, at least. If you want to go the silent route, you need to completely separate your daily life from the illegal stuff. Obvious stuff, like no shared email- or other accounts, but even down to no shared browser sessions. The old fashioned way is a second laptop. If you want to make an impact and contribute to the community, consider seeding torrents for some of the existing shadow libraries. Anna’s Archive has about a petabyte of torrents that have less than three seeders, for example.
From the responses in this thread, it seems like OP is either a fed, or, much more likely, extremely inexperienced and naive when it comes to Opsec. At the very least, they are putting themselves at risk. Is it still advisable to leave this post up?
The publishers don’t care. They’re suing LibGen, scihub, etc nonetheless. Non-commercialism will not protect you. Crypto can be very traceable, it’s by definition an open ledger, and “bulletproof servers” is a term applied very broadly, often by dubious actors. Besides that, any Opsec is only as strong as the weakest link. You’re running a second domain via Namecheap, for fucks sake! Don’t take this lightly, this is not a game. A state actor could probably identify you within days. Are you ready for that?
that’s not how it works. the code and website may live on, but you are committing a crime right now (nothing wrong with that). If law enforcement comes after you, it won’t matter if you’ve ‘stepped away’ in the mean time. You can either go the route of Anna, keep very tight Opsec and make sure nothing seeps through the cracks. Or you go the way of Alexandra Elbakyan, make your piracy public, to make a point. That means you willingly accept never being able to travel anywhere that has enforced copyright laws. If you half-ass it somewhere in between, you will get caught, and you will face prison time or hefty fines (potentially millions). Are you aware of that?
that’s good and all, but as it stands now, it seems almost guaranteed your PII will leak. Are you okay to never set foot into a country that extradites to the US again?
Fair, at least as long as they’re not open-source
putting aside the obvious glowie talk someone else raised, you should really, really reconsider your opsec. And I mean, really. Using discord to communicate? And spamming Reddit, from a non-dedicated account, no less? Posting PII to justify downtimes? If this gets any traction at all, you’re in deep shit. There’s a good reason Anna is as anonymous as she is. Cat is out of the bag at this point, I’d recommend shutting it down. You could always continue developing the code for it, the frontend looks pretty good. But please, reconsider if you have the dedication and knowledge it takes to run a shadow library and not be caught.
High enough caliber you can get both
I got a NAS with 24GB, that’s spread around three harddrives, yes. The files are a binary container format, it’s described here. So I could unpack them, but I have no reason to, really. Much easier to get the individual books I want. Each torrent is usually about 250GB, but some of the older ones are much larger or smaller
No, only the US and EU have invented internet, the rest of the world still communicates via horseback messengers and carrier pigeons
🤓☝️ akshually, crucial and essential are adjectives
How does this have less than 1k views‽
Hitler’s original plan was to deport all the Jews. Extermination then came as a matter of practicability. Don’t let it fool you, this absolutely checks out, they’re laying the groundwork for genocide.
Transphobic metal can fuck right off
Just gonna drop Cattle Decapitation here, tho (CW gore, and a lot of other fucked up shit):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvxVkF8lCAo
Making songs about torturing transphobes since 2013
It’s about the certainty to have what you want, where you want it, reliably. I run NixOS with Impermanence, which means I reset my root partion on every boot, and have what state I need specifically opt-in. And I run a shared config over multiple devices (home PC and Laptop), so installing something on one also installs it on the other, next time I rebuild. It certainly takes time getting used to, but I’ve been really enjoying it so far
How is it that manifestos are either the ramblings of a lunatic or the most heart wrenching, poignant text you’ve ever read?
I remember reading Willem Van Spronsen’s manifesto days after he got shot while firebombing ICE busses. I remember how I cried, read it again, cried again. He saw the writing on the wall, and took action. Godspeed!