The Unstoppable Pirate Ebook Haven with 600,000 Student Admirers Worldwide
Via TorrentFreak
Summary
Z-Library, the world's largest pirate eBook repository, revealed in May 2023 that more than 600,000 students and teachers worldwide were registered users of the site, based on an analysis of university and school email addresses in its user database. The figure is considered a significant undercount, as U.S.-based users were excluded due to an active criminal prosecution, and many students likely register with personal rather than institutional email addresses.
Despite repeated legal crackdowns — including the seizure of over 200 domain names and the arrest of two alleged operators by U.S. law enforcement — Z-Library has continued operating, migrating to dark web and personalized domain access methods. The platform hosts millions of books and academic papers, offering free access that publishers argue costs the industry hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
