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It has come to our attention that ibdocuments(2)/ibsupport[dot]pm, the de facto recognised successor of the original ibdocuments[dot]com, has implemented an authentication system, gatekeeping free access to the resources.

It seems that one must now authenticate with a third-party service, requiring a Gmail or Discord account to be able to access the resources.

As another mirror site dedicated to freedom of knowledge (free as in gratis AND free as in libre), we express profound disappointment for such an act. We urge the ibsupport team to remove such despicable restrictions.

Prima facie, it seems such measures are to protect the ibsupport team, to identify and deter copyright trolls. However, the rationale rapidly falls apart – are the copyright trolls not able to create disposable alternative accounts? How would you properly identify them?

To make matters worse, this is an extreme invasion of privacy of the end-users.

Gmail: https://files.catbox.moe/bwv17g.png

Discord: https://files.catbox.moe/rqpniv.png

Sure, if ibsupport has plans for forums and the like, account systems are convenient. However, one questions why resources as simple as a statically-served N22 pack would be account-walled (not to mention, they did not even seem to provide an archive download for the entire pack).

What purpose is there to collect such data?

One might even suspect that ibsupport is a honeypot. Of course, we are not outright suggesting this, but it must be acknowledged that ibsupport does glow in the dark.

https://files.catbox.moe/1uli0m.jpg

Both we and ibsupport are supposed to share the same modus operandi of preserving and promoting liberty of education. To improve accessibility, convenience and openness.

We are starting preparations for the full migration of resources to the IPFS and reduce IB Haven into an indexing site, akin to a torrent search engine. This is legally a lot safer.

However, ibsupport seems to continually engage in information-monopolistic behaviour. It is evident that ibsupport has a lot more financial resources and capability than us, hence we would be extremely saddened if they veer towards adopting the tenets of the "establishment", the Educational Industrial Complex, who we are supposed to be against. We do not want to see them fail, nor do we even want to think of the possibility that they really are a sting operation.

We encourage everyone who has the capability (and if not, do try learning) to host their own mirrors, seed resources (this will be easy once we migrated resources fully onto IPFS), and spread knowledge freely as much as possible. The more, the better.

It's not about the past papers. It's about sending a message.

https://liberamanifesto.com/
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