The legal status of the project, as well as its potential impact on the publishing industry and authors' rights, is a matter of ongoing debate. While the website seizures reduced the accessibility of the content, it still remains available on the dark web. Department of Justice, and two Russian nationals associated with the project were arrested on charges related to copyright infringement and money laundering in Argentina. In November 2022, the clearnet domains of the website were seized by the U.S. The Z-Library project and its activities may be considered illegal in some jurisdictions. The organization describes itself as 'the world's largest e-book library', as well as 'the world's largest scientific articles store', and operates as a non-profit organization sustained by donations. As of January 1, 2023, Z-Library reported to have more than 11,828,754 books and 84,837,643 articles. Z-Library is particularly popular in emerging economies and among academics.

Īccording to the Alexa Traffic Rank service, Z-Library was ranked as the 8,182nd most active website in October 2021. It began as a mirror of Library Genesis, from which most of its books originate. Z-Library (abbreviated as z-lib, formerly BookFinder) is a shadow library project for file-sharing access to scholarly journal articles, academic texts and general-interest books.

Comparison of Internet Relay Chat clients.

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