libgen and z-library must be Russia's greatest philanthropic contribution to the rest of mankind (despite all the other dodgy stuff it is involved in, which I am not belittling).
It was a no brainer for them from a strategic point of view: knock out a hugely profitable business (textbook publishing) of you adversary while increasing your soft power by 100x due to the unpopularity of said industry.
There are surely loads of artists and independent technical authors who got screwed by it which I am not diminishing, but this is more than dwarfed by the benefit to the hundred of millions around the world especially from developing countries who can't afford to pay $100+ for a textbook on essential topic like organic chemistry or electrical engineering. In fact even if you want to pay this much sometimes it is the only place to find an out of date scientific book (which I needed to do often in mathematics) that is not being published due to lack of demand while at the same time the publisher refuses to submit the book to the open domain.
It was a no brainer for them from a strategic point of view: knock out a hugely profitable business (textbook publishing) of you adversary while increasing your soft power by 100x due to the unpopularity of said industry.
There are surely loads of artists and independent technical authors who got screwed by it which I am not diminishing, but this is more than dwarfed by the benefit to the hundred of millions around the world especially from developing countries who can't afford to pay $100+ for a textbook on essential topic like organic chemistry or electrical engineering. In fact even if you want to pay this much sometimes it is the only place to find an out of date scientific book (which I needed to do often in mathematics) that is not being published due to lack of demand while at the same time the publisher refuses to submit the book to the open domain.