U.S. charges Russian suspects with operating Z-Library e-Book site

Z-Library

Anton Napolsky (33) and Valeriia Ermakova (27), two Russian nationals, were charged with intellectual property crimes linked to Z-Library, a pirate online eBook repository.

The defendants were arrested on November 3, 2022, in Argentina by the country's authorities at the request of U.S. law enforcement.

A day later, Z-Library's clearnet domains (z-lib.org, b-ok.org, and 3lib.net) were seized by the Department of Justice and the FBI, although the fate of the operators was unknown to the public at that time.

Z-Library was one of the world's largest public and free-to-access written content repositories, containing 11 million books and 84 million articles in a massive 220 TB database.

Of the two defendants, Napolsky is burdened by evidence, based on records obtained from Google and Amazon, that he was in control of Z-Library.

"The defendants are alleged to have operated a website for over a decade whose central purpose was providing stolen intellectual property, in violation of copyright laws," said FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Driscoll.

Z-Library started as a volunteer-run project with no commercial direction. However, at some point, it started offering paid memberships in exchange for premium features.

This means that the platform had financial income from its operation, generated at the expense of work authors and publishers.

Moreover, according to the unsealed court documents, Napolsky used the online advertising platform 'Google Ads' to promote Z-Library to internet users, actively trying to draw more audience for the pirate platform.

The defendants profited illegally off work they stole, often uploading works within mere hours of publication, and in the process victimized authors, publishers, and booksellers. — U.S. Attorney Breon Peace

Z-Library was on the receiving end of multiple geo-blocking orders because of disregarding copyright ownership, distribution, and intellectual property rights.

However, those regional blocks could be bypassed by using specific tools like VPNs or accessing the platform via one of the multiple alternative domains it operated.

As the U.S. DOJ announcement explains, investigators found that Z-Library operated a complex network of 249 interrelated domains, all of which are now seized by the authorities.

Interestingly, Z-Library's Tor site remains available at the time of writing, indicating how challenging it is to track hosting providers and servers keeping onion sites online.

Currently, the two defendants are presumed innocent until the trial, a date for which has not been determined in the U.S. DoJ announcement.

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U.S. charges Russian suspects with operating Z-Library e-Book site