
US Court Grants ISPs and Search Engine Blockade of Sci-Hub - stevemclaugh
https://torrentfreak.com/us-court-grants-isps-and-search-engine-blockade-of-sci-hub-171106
======
Knufen
As someone who works in academia (Europe) I understand that scientific papers
need hosting and server space and such, but does it really help humanity that
all advances will be behind very expensive pay walls? I would argue otherwise.
The current trend is not sustainable nor favorable for anyone except parasitic
publishers.

Edit: I understand the website was breaking the law, but this seems like
symptom treating

~~~
rayiner
The law doesn't operate by going back to first principles ("will it really
help humanity?") in every case. We've decided copyright is reasonable as a
concept, and we evaluate each case by reference to the rules of copyright,
without creating special exceptions all over the place.

Nor are any special exceptions necessary. Absolutely nothing prevents
scientists and academics from publishing in open-access journals. Scientists
and academics do so to cash in on the prestige of the "branded" for-pay
journals. Given that they do this voluntarily, why should the law step in and
ameliorate the collateral effects of their conduct?

~~~
mattmanser
This presents some pretty extreme view points as if they're perfectly
reasonable.

I doubt you could find any member of the public who would say "Yes" if asked
"Should research you paid for cost you money to read?".

No reasonable person would agree with the rules as they are if they were
introduced today, we got here because it's not an election issue and special
interests and lobbyists have distorted rules written centuries ago massively
in their favour.

~~~
Bromskloss
> I doubt you could find any member of the public who would say "Yes" if asked
> "Should research you paid for cost you money to read?".

Isn't that a claim that the public may have against the researchers, rather
than against journals? A journal is merely _offering_ a publishing service,
and the public may, if they deem that service unacceptable, demand of the
researchers that they do not use it.

~~~
fao_
> and the public may, if they deem that service unacceptable, demand of the
> researchers that they do not use it.

Many hiring requirements for researchers is that they have a published paper
in X journal. Usually these journals are run by Elsevier, who takes copyright
_from_ the researchers. Are suggesting that the public lobby universities to
change their hiring practices? (In which case you had better have a good
alternative, otherwise you'll most likely be laughed off)

Anyway, your putting the burden on _the public_ feels like just another way of
saying "Someone else should do it". You're a member of the public, have _you_
set up anything to demand that researchers not publish in certain journals?

------
lykr0n
I don't want to be that guy, but nothing here seems outlandish. A website is
actively violating US law, didn't show up to defend itself, and now facing an
injunction. The same happens for foreign entities that do not comply with US
law.

I'll be interested to see how far this goes, and if any ISPs start blocking
the site. With the whole Net Neutrality debate, I'm curious to see if the ISPs
change their stance when they start getting ordered to block sites.

~~~
wccrawford
The blocking of the site by ISPs and search engines is the bad part, IMO.
Other than that, it seems pretty standard.

And it's kind of dumb, because they could just get a new domain name, like
many of the other torrent sites do. It's effectively worthless.

~~~
PenguinCoder
This is the key takeaway from the article. As much as I agree that researches
deserve fair compensation for their work; I also believe gate-keeping academic
knowledge is also wrong. It's not surprising that the US legal system found
against Sci-hub. Issuing the legally binding statement, that blocking a site
by ISP and search engine level, is the real problem. It sets a very tenuous
precedent.

~~~
landryraccoon
How do researchers get paid under the current system? My understanding is that
the journals do not pay the scientists that produce the articles. Am I
mistaken in this?

~~~
vanattab
They are paid ether by their respective universities/institutions/companies
and/or they pay themselves from the grant money they were awarded for a
specific project.

~~~
Chaebixi
But the key point is that they're not paid by the publisher _for_ the
publication, they're paid _to produce_ the publication by others. The
publisher is just gets it for (basically) free and then profits off the fees.

~~~
KGIII
In fact, you may very well also be paying to get your research published. They
get you coming and going.

------
Overtonwindow
Thankfully there's TOR and other methods to get around this. I disagree
completely with the courts. Long live Sci-Hub

~~~
HarryHirsch
The worrying thing is that now there's a single point of failure: Elbakyan.
She has the power to cut off anyone she wants to, and she did it in the past
to some Russian university that dared criticize her.

~~~
aw3c2
Do your part and start mirroring parts of it!
[http://libgen.io/scimag/repository_torrent/](http://libgen.io/scimag/repository_torrent/)

~~~
KGIII
Okay. I've got a dedicated seed box but it is only DSL. I have ample disk
space.

What am I looking at, at that link? Is there a 'mirror the whole damned thing'
torrent and how frequently should I update this?

I already mirror a bunch of Linux ISOs, so it's not a problem to add more.

~~~
gpm
Looking at the dates on the file list, I suspect not, and that the way you
keep up to date is to keep adding the new torrents as they come out.

Since torrents are immutable it makes sense... would otherwise be a pain to
update.

~~~
KGIII
I'll add the most recent. Thanks.

------
mnm1
I fail to see how the injunction is not a violation of the first amendment
right of search engines and ISPs to display any legal content they want--and
we are talking about legal content here (links). It is clearly improper under
DMCA, but it seems to me such injunctions are simply unconstitutional, DMCA or
not. Anyone care to explain the twisted logic of the court here?

~~~
joliv
First, the Court sees Sci-Hub as essentially hosting the copyrighted
materials. From the order in _ACS v. Does_ :

> ...Sci-Hub has copied elements—and, in many cases, the entirety of—those
> works, and that Sci-Hub has distributed those works by allowing individuals
> to download the works from its website, all in violation of the Copyright
> Act.

But to entertain your argument of First Amendment protections, linking to
infringing documents is pretty clearly incitement of imminent lawless action
as established in _Brandenburg_.

------
rayj
This is not going to do anything. Libgen.io or
[https://libgen.pw/](https://libgen.pw/) if scihub is down.

------
Idontknowmyuser
I wonder what are the challenges against implementing an open "near-full-
automated" journal?

\- anyone can submit a paper. which is stored in the yet to be reviewed
section.

\- only users with confirmed university affilation / users that published more
than X papers can opt in to become a reviewer.

\- a reviewer is randomly selected to receive a review offer [in his indicated
field] which he can accept or decline.

\- the user and the reviewer are than linked together anonymously and their
correspondance is stored to be published with the paper under review section.

\- after that the reviewer makes a decision.

\- when enough reviewers have made their decision, the paper is marked as
rejected, or moved to the published section according to a majority rule.

\- if the paper failed,the user then can choose to either:

    
    
       * (modify the paper = optional) and resubmit
    
       * keep the paper public but indicate it failed the 
         review process
    
       * delete the paper
    

\- if the paper gets published,trusted users of the site can then leave
feedback (through the UI) to indicate:

    
    
      * whether they could reproduce the results or not:
      this might help alert the author if there are unclear 
      parts in thier methodology description.
    
      *  if the paper was helpful/intresting to them.
    
      *  add community questions under the paper, which can 
          be answered by the author / or a trusted user.
    

\- authors can edit their work to correct in anytime they want [ allowing a
faster correction of mistakes] , change history is kept to prevent abuse.

from a programming point of view it doesn't seem that hard to do. so what are
the relevant obstacles?

~~~
kilotaras
Problem with journals is not technological, but a coordination one (same as
with p-value).

If every scientist "defects" to open-access journal - everyone is better of.
But if only a handful do that they will lose impact factor and will take a hit
to their career.

Addition: This is commonly known as Nash Equilibrium[0].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium)

------
kw71
I have been following this judge, Leonie Brinkema for about twenty years. Her
court and rulings are interesting and amusing. It seems to me like she lets a
lot of nonsense fly to rule in favor of her personal beliefs or patrons or
whatever they may be. I think I have caught her applying different rules at
times. This might be an abusive technical default judgment, considering the
actual value of the works and other issues like process service shenanigans
that are common with these judgments.

I would love to hear what her rationale for this dollar amount is. After
watching her for so long, the "airplane" level of "unbelievable bs" in her
transcripts and rulings makes me want to wager the answer is among: they're my
friends; I like this type of plaintiff; this is the order they presented and I
simply signed it without consideration or review.

------
return0
Maybe they need to block sci-hub so scientists finally wake up and do
_something_. I mean everyone i know loves sci-hub because it feels like a real
upgrade for searching the literature. A lot of ppl will be mad if it is closed
down.

The science community needs to come up with some kind of intermediate measures
since open access publishing is not really catching up. For example, there
could be laws that prevent publishers from withholding the copyrights from the
authors, so the authors can always upload their papers and their commentaries
for free elsewhere (i 'm sure _someone_ will make a nice website for that - we
already have arxiv &bioarxiv). Universities can continue paying their
subscriptions to the journals , but blocking the right to free access to
publicly-funded works is highly unethical.

------
dayaz36
Today is Alexandra Elbakyan's birthday. Not a good time to receive bad news

~~~
omginternets
Free publicity is hardly bad news ;)

------
jancsika
Ok IPFS fans, here's your chance.

Can you build a better boat?

------
drtillberg
It is not obvious to me that the judge intended to order worldwide ISPs
unaffiliated with sci-hub to block all traffic to sci-hub. Seems still to be
referring to sci-hub's ISP.

The reference to search engines is odd, though. Hypothetically, a search
engine indexes documents from that court case, and the documents name the
address of the outlaw website. Does that violate the order?

------
jklein11
Do articles that are published in journals meet some sort of specification? If
you find a study that was published in a journal do you automatically find it
more credible than a random article you find on the internet? If so, what has
the journal done to achieve that credibility.

The way I see it, the value academic journals provide is to verify that the
study is from a reputable source. It's not the distribution of the articles
that you are paying for, it is the curation.

Something like Sci-Hub would not be able to exist without the publications
first verifying that the studies are legitimate.

I know very little about the world of academic publishing, so I'm not sure if
my take on this situation is totally off.

------
bastawhiz
This sounds like the perfect use case for IPFS.

------
gooseus
I support Scihub and all efforts to make the body of human knowledge and
scientific research freely available to all humans... especially if any of the
research has been funded by taxpayer dollars.

I believe that at most, these journals should enjoy a limited copyright that
expires after a short time (1-10 years?) after which the papers should be
freely available.

That being said, this is disappointing to me:

> Sci-Hub was made aware of the legal proceedings but did not appear in court.
> As a result, a default was entered against the site.

This response creates no opportunity to argue a compelling case for why
scientific knowledge should not remain pay-walled by publishers and/or
establish new legal frameworks for copyright of scientific knowledge.

Here is a bonus article from Priceonomics I'm a big fan of (that I'm sure has
been shared here before) about why paywalled science is Bullshit:

[https://priceonomics.com/post/50096804256/why-is-science-
beh...](https://priceonomics.com/post/50096804256/why-is-science-behind-a-
paywall)

~~~
ArchReaper
>This response creates no opportunity to argue a compelling case for why
scientific knowledge should not remain pay-walled by publishers and/or
establish new legal frameworks for copyright of scientific knowledge.

You somehow think this would have been the correct platform to do that? While
being a target of a copyright-infringement lawsuit?

------
c517402
Government research grants need to require that papers produced are available
online for free. This would rapidly change the academic publishing situation.

~~~
return0
many funding bodies do. but what to do about older papers?

~~~
c517402
Maybe a law reducing the length of copyright on academic papers to a few
years.

~~~
return0
actually thats not a good idea. A paper may already take 1+ year to go from
experiment to publication, it should be open for everyone to read immediately
to be most useful - science moves fast.

