Gamifying piracy: functions and users of the Z-library
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-09-2021-0174 |
| Published date | 03 May 2022 |
| Date | 03 May 2022 |
| Pages | 351-370 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
| Author | Zakayo Kjellström |
Gamifying piracy: functions and
users of the Z-library
Zakayo Kjellstr€
om
Department of Culture and Media Studies, Umea Universitet, Umea, Sweden
Abstract
Purpose –This paper aims to show how an illegal repository of literature, the Z-library, relates to and
influences its users and how this relation is unique due to the illegal nature of the platform. The paper utilizes
the idea of gamification to exemplify how to motivate users to contribute to a large shadow library in order to
create the “world’s largest e-book library,”sans “librarians.”
Design/methodology/approach –The study makes use of an ethnographic approach. It interrogates the
functions of the website through intensive use—a close reading of sorts. The data provide a foundation for
illustratinghow illegaltext repositories functionat a surface level and how their designappeals to their user-base.
Findings –The paper provides a thorough and non-biased overview of how a “black open access”or “shadow
library”site provides its users with pirated literature. It suggests that the lynchpin sustaining their
functionality is a gamification of piracy designed to motivate a fragmented collective of individuals who work
primarily for personal reward, rather than altruistic goals.
Research limitations/implications –Due to the design of the study, the findings are not universal or
applicable to all illegal repositories of text. Readers and researchers are encouraged to apply the concept
introduced here to other cases.
Social implications –This paper includes implication on the perception of literature piracy, how pirated
literature is distributed and who performs the labor required to sustain illicit text repositories.
Originality/value –This paper provides a novel conceptual basis to study literature piracy.
Keywords Z-Library, Book piracy, Shadow library, Black open access, Gamification
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Shadow libraries are large illicit repositories of text. Websites such as Sci-Hub and Libgen are
among the largest of the shadow libraries, containing tens of millions of academic articles and
books (Karaganis, 2018). Their message is one of resistance: against a publishing oligopoly
(Larivi
ere et al., 2015), and for the free dissemination of information and knowledge to those in
need, beyond paywalls. Both Sci-Hub and Libgen are clear about the reasons for their
existence; they do not host ads or give privileges to donors, instead they strive toward an ideal
through illicit participatory culture.
Henry Jenkins argues that efforts, particularly within fan culture, that border upon the
illegal, can be commercialized within the purview of the market sector and thus push the
possibilitiesof new markets (Jenkins et al.,2013). In many ways, thisvision has been fulfilled.
From the perspective of piracy, the introduction of Netflix, Spotify and Steam has been
instrumental in offering alternatives to illegally distributing music, film and games. For
academic texts, solutions are available through deals between scientific publishers and
university libraries; however, these cannot compete with their illegal counterparts such as
Sci-Hub and Libgen. But what happens when the logic is inverted, and the aesthetics of the
market are subsumed into and utilizedin illicit spaces?
Functions and
users of the
Z-library
351
© Zakayo Kjellstr€
om. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the
Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and
create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full
attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://
creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 6 September 2021
Revised 4 April 2022
Accepted 7 April 2022
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 78 No. 7, 2022
pp. 351-370
Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-09-2021-0174
The Z-library overlaps with parts of Libgen’s collection but is removed from Libgen’s
design and administration; the only quality that they share is part of their catalog. The
Z-library offers a variety of functions for users requiring electronic literature. Its catalog
consists of 6.6 million books and 80 million articles. The Z-library is by no means a website on
the margin, a Similarweb search shows that it averages more than half a million visits a
month, and that is just on one of the many domains it hosts [1]. The design of the Z-library
front page is inviting and ensnaring, and its esthetic does not reveal illicit, immoral, or
revolutionary dimensions (see Figure 1).
Sci-Hub, on the other hand, openly displays its goals “...to remove all barriers in the way
of science,”including what the site has already achieved: becoming “the first website in the
world to provide mass and public access to research papers.”Further down the website there
is a further clarification of Sci-Hub’s intentions: knowledge free to all, no copyright and open
access (Figures 2 and 3).
Libgen’s front page does not immediately display its goals or ideas in the same fashion as
Sci-Hub; however, it does provide a direct link to a “letter of solidarity,”which contains similar
arguments to those found on the Sci-Hub webpage: “We have the means and methods to make
knowledge accessible to everyone, with no economic barrier to access and at a much lower
cost to society”(In Solidarity with Library Genesis and Sci-Hub,n.d.) (see Figure 4).
In this article, the Z-library’s technical functions will be interpreted to show what the
“world’s largest e-book library”looks like from the inside. The purpose is to examine this
platform as a particular medium within the illicit library sphere. One objective is to show how
the esthetics of the mainstream Internet and the look of commercial platforms can be
subsumed into illegal projects, and to reveal what kind of users the technologies on the
platform are designed for. Another objective is to show how the technological composition of
a shadow library mediates the experiences of users and librarianship through its various
Figure 1.
Frontpage of Z-library
JD
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