“We are committed to promoting a safe and positive environment for our users and rights holders. The Author’s Guild places blame on the social media platform for allowing the popularity of the website to grow. The complaint stated that Z-Library reached a level of notoriety superior to Library Genesis (Libgen), its counterpart shadow library, due to TikTok.

Shadow libraries like Z-Lib make it more difficult for authors to receive commissions from their books since these sites offer them for free, usually as e-books.

“Authors generally rely on multiple revenue streams to pull together a living, and they are increasingly exploring new ways to revive out-of-print works when the rights have reverted to them, especially as e-books,” stated a legal complaint issued by The Author’s Guild to the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). Z-Library, often shortened to Zlib, was created in 2009 but gained popularity over the past three years on TikTok with the hashtag “zlibrary.” According to The Author’s Guild, the hashtag is reported to have at least four million views. These types of pirated e-book websites are coined as “shadow libraries.” Users who attempt to access this site are now greeted with a screen displaying the warrant of seizure instead of a catalog of this week’s top downloaded books. It was recently seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation following a series of legal complaints made by The Author’s Guild, an organization of more than 12,000 members committed to supporting working writers. Z-Library was one of the internet’s largest sources of pirated e-books. 4, 2022, a free online library with over 10 million free e-books, ranging from children’s picture books to academic textbooks, was shut down for the foreseeable future.

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