[andai]

Two questions: (1) there are torrent backups of LibGen, right?

(2) If (1) is true, then I can download a book with a magnet link, and they'd have to arrest hundreds or thousands of people all over the world to prevent it.

The UI for for finding and downloading a single file from a massive torrent is not very good in any torrent client I've used, but how hard of a problem is that really? Is there not tremendous value in solving it?

[generationP]

It's a big problem for extending the library. And torrenting is inherently less safe than downloading through a browser.

[bembo]

Why would torrenting be less safe?

[cute_boi]

because you may expose your ip to unintended peers. Not all people use VPNs.

If you are downloading from browser, you generally use server ip, so you don't expose your ip to peers. You only expose your ip to server.