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Library Genesis / LibGen

Based in Russia, this is the largest and longest running currently openly available collection. Headed by a team led by bookwarrior and Bill_G (of fiction torrent fame), they have several initiatives: i. over 1.5 million files of mainly non-fiction ebooks, ii. an equivalent number of mainly fiction ebooks, iii. +20 million papers from journals of science, history, art etc., iv. comics, magazines and paintings; totally amounting to at least 100 TB -- easily the Library of Congress of the digital world.

LibGen is actually a movement of sorts -- they are driven by a true intention to liberate access to knowledge rather than just go on DRMrip binges. Historically they have worked by downloading whole collections that have already been posted in fora or as torrents, although a significant portion is also due to individual efforts, especially after about 800k which marked their acquisition of the Lnu collection after its destruction.

The high point of their ingenious survival is http://www.sci-hub.org, which routes to JStor, Springer, Elsevier, Sage and other journal publishing biggies pretending to be university workstations.

Direct links to files are available also through the following sites:

 

http://gen.lib.rus.ec

http://free-books.us.to

http://ebookfi.org

http://libgen.io
http://book4you.org/

 

and torrent files are also available. A while ago, a seedbox was launched until October 2012. FTP access has been disabled since a few months. Their forums are the main portal to keep yourself updated (registration needed; mostly in Russian).

 

Even if another gigapedia.com/library.nu/gigle.ws/ebooksclub.org comes along, this will be the bedrock that it will stand on.