Hey everyone! 📚 I’m excited to introduce Bookracy, an open-source shadow library dedicated to preserving and freely sharing knowledge. With a large and growing collection, Bookracy is (annoying) ad-free, non-profit, and lightning-fast ⚡—plus, it’s fully open-source and powered by a passionate community. Whether you're a reader, researcher, or developer, there’s a place for you here. Check out our Reddit, website, GitHub, and hop into our Discord to join the conversation and help grow this movement for open access! 🤝❤️

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[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 199 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Note: Author requested permission to post this.

[–] itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 24 points 2 days ago

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?

[–] rdwxth@lemmy.dbzer0.com 87 points 3 days ago (1 children)

ty i forgot to clarify❤

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 91 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Since you're maintaining a subreddit, you might want to create a comm in lemmy as well. Reddit has already taken down other piracy subs like GenP

[–] rdwxth@lemmy.dbzer0.com 48 points 3 days ago (1 children)

yeah sure a little help on getting started would be great but ill get to it

[–] rdwxth@lemmy.dbzer0.com 87 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Done! https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/bookracy

[–] TheImpressiveX@lemm.ee 65 points 3 days ago

!bookracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

[–] nullptr@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Always excited to see a new project like this. I would def move away from reddit and Github. Both have a track record of going after piracy projects. Reddit used to be safe but they are going full hammer rn. Github seems to be fine unless its too obvious its piracy. Discord is still safe.

[–] rdwxth@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 12 hours ago

Ty for the support Discord is still risky and so is github so we are aiming to move soon.

[–] itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 112 points 2 days ago (14 children)

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.

[–] theblips@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day ago

Seriously, I though Lemmy users would be a little more aware of this stuff. I've seen people openly saying they want to assault federal agents and government property, and now this guy

[–] NedRyerson@lemmy.ml 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'd be more than a little interested to be pointed towards a guide, or even just a bullet point list, of good opsec considerations or tools for a project like this. I've got time and technical ability but don't spend a lot of time thinking about these concerns. The last thing I want is to cause myself trouble I'm not ready for, but I'd like to make a significant contribution to the community, so I want to prepare adequately.

Any guides or lists you can think of?

[–] itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] NedRyerson@lemmy.ml 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I can appreciate your concern and point of view, but I asked "so if I want to do this, how can I prepare to do it safely?" And your response was "just don't, do this instead." I can certainly seed, but that's not what I'm aiming for. I am far more interested in creating systems and providing content. My time is...flexible. Suffice to say, the time concern is not going to be the roadblock.

[–] itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 2 days ago

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.

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[–] ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 67 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Being “private” and having a discord is like an oxymoron.

I only see a front end on GitHub. Is this just a libgen mirror?

[–] rdwxth@lemmy.dbzer0.com 33 points 3 days ago (3 children)

No its not a libgen mirror - we have our own collections and are torrenting from libgen + zlib aswell - and backend is going to be open sourced in the future once its finished and ready - right now the code is very janky and im too embarassed to release it lol. Theres still alot of additions to do to the backend and once that is done I will release.

We also have a telegram and signal group - the discord was just for my existing community who are primarily discord users aswell

[–] Brylant@discuss.online 16 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Revolt.chat is a really solid alternative to Discord

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[–] Coldmoon@sh.itjust.works 28 points 2 days ago (14 children)

This is giving me Fed vibes

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[–] alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Glad to see this initiative. A genuine question: isn't this redundant with Annas Archive?

[–] rdwxth@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

annas archive doesnt have fast downloads for free users - downloads take around a good 30 mins for a decently sized books

bookracy aims to fix this issue

[–] alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Thx for clarifying! I usually don't notice that bc I always use the external downloads. It would be rly cool to see bookracy in the external downloads of Annas Archives then!

also pls keep your humour, it's funny to see the libs get mad bc they see a "Russian Federation" tag

[–] rdwxth@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago

lmaoo ty yeah i genuinely dont understand the hate 😭 yeah annas archive soon come 😊

[–] Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 42 points 3 days ago (24 children)

Bit gross that it's a RU domain though

[–] rdwxth@lemmy.dbzer0.com 69 points 3 days ago

there is a .org domain and a few other mirrors go check out https://rentry.co/bookracy the .ru domain is just us taking precautions against a takedown request

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[–] besselj@lemmy.ca 33 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Saw some good engineering textbooks on there too. Great job.

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