ok maybe i’m just being a dumbass. I’m getting textbooks off of z-library per the megathread, as they are the only site that lists the specific books I need currently. I am browsing via TOR.

I can’t seem to see a download button or link for the books I am looking for, nor for any other book I open. Maybe this is because I don’t have an account. But let’s say I don’t feel like making one, because that means spinning up another burner email, and and and… idk. I’m lazy.

I thought I’d be nice and access the content via the IPFS CID using the IPFS desktop node/app thing from here. Zlibrary lists IPFS CID’s for all books they host. That will save server load on them and likely be faster for a couple of the 200+MB PDF’s.
But it absolutely can NOT find any of the CID’s that z-library gives for any of it’s content, whether I click browse or inspect in the search box or use the import function, even after I let it sit and run on my extra seed PC for two days to populate the peer list.

I know IPFS must be working as some of the test CID’s I used from the tutorial imported ok.

am i being dumb? am I missing the fundamental purpose of the IPFS CID’s here or something?

  • mahavir@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    11 months ago

    I don’t know what IPFS is, but you do need an account to download books from z library via tor. If you don’t want to make an account you can try libgen or anna’s archive they mostly have all the books.

  • Vub@lemmy.worldEnglish
    91·
    11 months ago

    Creating a burner email would take a tenth of the time it took you writing this post.

    • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      I know, and I remembered I already had a protonmail set up for junk like this. So I got the direct downloads to work after logging in this morning. Very helpful of zlibrary to NOT tell you anywhere that an account is actually required for downloads and not just “additional features”…

      However, I like to mess with new tech when I come across it. IPFS seems very useful and a nice bridge between p2p resiliency of torrents with the convenience of direct download and since it seemed like I could use it for zlib, I just wanted to try it…