Category Archives: oa.russia

How Google and Amazon helped the FBI to successfully track the Russian owners of Z-Library – Good e-Reader

Posted on by
Reply

“Behind-the-scenes information is slowly pouring out as to what really happened as the cops closed in on Z-Library and eventually took it down. As TorrentFreak reported, active co-operation from companies like Google and Amazon helped the FBI in tracking the activities of the company as well as its Russian owners. Also, from what the investigators revealed, tracking down the owners of what came to be known as the world’s largest digital library proved to be much simpler than they might have thought.

The FBI, armed with search warrants aimed at Google and Amazon found it relatively easy to unravel the truth given how, as the investigators soon got to know, the need to secure their identity never seemed to be the top priority for the owners Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova. Both have since been arrested from Argentina and chances are that they will be deported to the US for further investigation….”

FBI takeover Zlibrary BookTok Erupted – The Washington Post

Posted on by
Reply

“The FBI’s takedown of Z-Library, one of the world’s largest repositories of pirated books and academic papers, this month set ablaze the subset of TikTok devoted to discussing books and authors, said Lexi Hardesty, a BookTok content creator….

The FBI revealed Wednesday that two Russian nationals, Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova, have been charged with criminal copyright infringement, wire fraud and money laundering for operating Z-Library….”

Feds arrest Russians with alleged ties to pirated ebook site Z-Library – The Verge

Posted on by
Reply

“Federal law enforcement arrested and charged two Russian individuals with criminal copyright infringement over their alleged involvement with the pirated ebook Z-Library. Z-Library, which has been around since 2009, billed itself as the “world’s largest ebook library” before the US government shut down the site earlier this month.

According to the Department of Justice, the pair in question, Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova, were arrested in Argentina at the request of the US government on November 3rd. In addition to criminal copyright infringement, the two are also facing charges of money laundering and wire fraud. The US government shut down and seized the domains associated with Z-Library at the time of their arrest, but, as noted by Ars Technica, some users are still able to access the site on the dark web….”

FBI takeover Zlibrary BookTok Erupted – The Washington Post

Posted on by
Reply

“The FBI’s takedown of Z-Library, one of the world’s largest repositories of pirated books and academic papers, this month set ablaze the subset of TikTok devoted to discussing books and authors, said Lexi Hardesty, a BookTok content creator….

The FBI revealed Wednesday that two Russian nationals, Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova, have been charged with criminal copyright infringement, wire fraud and money laundering for operating Z-Library….”

Two Russian Nationals Charged with Running Massive E-Book Piracy Website | USAO-EDNY | Department of Justice

Posted on by
Reply

“Earlier today, in federal court in Brooklyn, an indictment and a complaint were unsealed charging Russian nationals Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova with criminal copyright infringement, wire fraud and money laundering for operating Z-Library, an online e-book piracy website.  The pair was arrested on November 3, 2022 in Cordoba, Argentina at the request of the United States.  At the same time, Z-Library’s network of online domains was also taken offline and seized by the U.S. government, pursuant to a court order that was also unsealed today….”

Feds arrest Russians accused of running the largest pirated e-book library | Ars Technica

Posted on by
Reply

“Last month, the alleged masterminds behind Z-Library—an e-book pirate site that claims to be “the world’s largest library”—were arrested. According to a press release yesterday from the US Department of Justice, Russian nationals Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova have been charged with “criminal copyright infringement, wire fraud and money laundering for operating Z-Library.”

“As alleged, 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,” Breon Peace, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.

At the request of the US government, Napolsky and Ermakova were arrested in Argentina on November 3. On the same day, the US government seized “a complex network of approximately 249 interrelated web domains,” the press release said. For many less web-savvy users, the domain seizure essentially shut down access to Z-Library’s 11 million e-books, but anyone on the dark web knows it’s still up and running—suggesting that while arresting Napolsky and Ermakova has stifled Z-Library, it has not shuttered it, and it could come back….”

Feds charge Russians linked to the ‘world’s largest’ pirated e-book library | Engadget

Posted on by
Reply

“US law enforcement isn’t just interested in shutting down video pirates. The feds have charged two Russian nationals, Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova, for allegedly running the pirate e-book repository Z-Library. The site was billed as the “world’s largest library” and held over 11 million titles, many of which were bootleg versions stripped of copyright protections.

The pair was arrested in Cordoba, Argentina at the US’ request on November 3rd. The American government disabled and seized the public Z-Library site at the same time. Napolsky and Ermakova each face charges of copyright infringement, money laundering and wire fraud….”

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

Posted on by
Reply

“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….”

Tackling the politicisation of COVID-19 data reporting through open access data sharing – The Lancet Infectious Diseases

Posted on by
Reply

“Regression analysis of country-specific death rates among 137 countries, showed that approximately 400?000 deaths were estimated to be unaccounted for during the first year of the pandemic, most likely among autocratic governments.

 During the early stages of the pandemic, the Chinese Government limited knowledge of the emerging disease and downplayed its severity. The Chinese Government did not allow the media to use terms like fatal and lockdown. Houthi rebels in Yemen relied on under-reporting cases to avoid accountability and maintain economic activity, leading to the reporting of only four COVID-19 cases and one death in the highly populated Sana’a City over the first year of the pandemic. Most countries report cases and deaths that are both probable and confirmed by testing. However, in Russia, only COVID-19 confirmed deaths are included in official counts, despite low supplies of PCR tests, leading to vast under-reporting of deaths. Similarly, some Brazilian hospitals have been implicated in the under-reporting of COVID-19 deaths in response to government pressure to avoid triggering the apparent need for lockdown measures. When official and aggregate sources were available, the JHU CSSE team overcame such challenges by implementing innovative anomaly detection processes and data fusion approaches in the data coalition process.

Political polarisation has threatened the reliability of data supplied by US Government agencies. The Trump White House Administration advised hospitals to send data on SARS-CoV-2 and intensive care unit capacities to a private company, bypassing the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Concerningly, a relationship was exposed between the private contractor and the Trump family’s corporation. The switch to sending data to a private contractor led to a hiatus in publicly available data from the US CDC. Moreover, the transition was accompanied by sporadic updates, with many irregularities in the data and inconsistencies in the definition of metrics from the contracted private company….”

Wikipedia fights Russian order to remove Ukraine war information | Reuters

Posted on by
Reply

“The Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, has filed an appeal against a Moscow court decision demanding that it remove information related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, arguing that people have a right to know the facts of the war….”

How the Wayback Machine Is Saving Digital Ukraine – IEEE Spectrum

Posted on by
Reply

“When the Ukrainian invasion began, the Internet Archive launched several efforts to capture the Ukrainian Internet. Its archivists launched a high-volume crawl through hundreds of thousands of websites ending in “.ua.” They selected specific sites to archive as completely as possible, including government, education, and library sites. And they targeted journalism, particularly Ukrainian news sites and aggregators. The organization has also been supporting others working to save Ukraine’s digital resources, including SUCHO (Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online) and the Archive Team.

Mark Graham, director of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, explained this dive into Ukraine’s Internet and how it differs from the Wayback Machine’s usual approach to preserving digital history. …”

Universities UK statement on Ukraine: 3 March

Posted on by
Reply

“We do not support the application of blanket academic boycotts that prevent academics collaborating with other academics as a means of protest against the actions of their governments. We are therefore advising our members to make decisions about whether to continue collaborations on a case-by-case basis, informed both by UK Government guidance and appropriate due diligence. We have requested the government’s support for universities as they do this….”

Universities should not carry out ‘blanket academic boycotts’ of Russia

Posted on by
Reply

“Universities should not carry out blanket boycotts of Russian academics over the invasion of Ukraine, a leading sector body has said.

Universities UK (UUK), which represents 140 universities across the United Kingdom, said in a statement on the situation in Ukraine, published on Thursday, that it does “not support the application of blanket academic boycotts that prevent academics collaborating with other academics as a means of protest against the actions of their governments”. …”

Journal editor explains ban on manuscripts from Russian institutions – Retraction Watch

Posted on by
Reply

“First of all, let me say, because there is some misunderstanding circulating in some social media regarding the issue you asked me for information, that the editors of the Journal of Molecular Structure did not decide to implement any sort of ban to articles submitted by Russian authors. This would be something I, or my colleagues, could never accept. Our Russian colleagues, as all our colleagues from all around the world, deserve us maximum respect.

However, it was decided by the editors of the journal to not consider manuscripts authored by scientists working at Russian Institutions, in result of the humanitarian implications emerging from the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation. This position is temporary and shall apply until the refugees (whoever they are, Ukrainians, Russians, or of any other nationality) have conditions to return to their homes, their jobs, and join their families….”

An analysis of research output in open access journals in BRICS countries: a bibliometric study | Emerald Insight

Posted on by
Reply

Abstract:  Purpose

This paper aims to investigate the current status of research output published in open access (OA) journals from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) countries from 2010 to 2019 and compare their performances in terms of OA research output.

Design/methodology/approach

Papers contributed by the researchers of BRICS countries were searched using an advanced search option in the Web of Science core collection database. The retrieved results were restricted to the “journal articles” published in the “English language” during the time period of 2010 to 2019. After that, the selected papers were again refined by using the “open access” section to identify the research output of BRICS countries published in OA journals.

Findings

Total 2,219,943 papers were published from BRICS countries, out of which 402,199 articles were published in OA journals and South Africa has published the highest number of research output in OA journals (31%). Although, there has been a constant increasing growth of research output published in OA journals in BRICS countries from 13,300 papers in 2010 to 82,310 articles in 2019. Engineering and Technology have published the maximum number of papers in OA journals. Researchers of BRICS countries mostly contributed their OA research output in journals published from the USA and Scientific Reports (UK) is identified as one of the leading OA journals. Additionally, among all the BRICS countries, China is found as the promising leader in terms of OA journals publications, the maximum share i.e. 71.25 per cent of total 402,199 OA journal publications have been produced by the highest number 137 (23.41%) of institutions of China and Chinese Academy of Sciences (China) is leading institution with 39,036 papers published in OA journals.

Research limitations/implications

This study is limited to BRICS countries, but it offers theoretical implications for extending its scope to different countries. This study may be used for raising awareness of OA among researchers of BRICS countries and encouraging them to contribute their research work in OA journals. The findings of this study are useful and meaningful in understanding the comparative status of research across countries, disciplines, journals and institutions.

Originality/value

This is the first study in BRICS countries focusing on the research output published in OA journals.