
Sci-Hub as Necessary, Effective Civil Disobedience - dredmorbius
http://bjoern.brembs.net/2016/02/sci-hub-as-necessary-effective-civil-disobedience/
======
tacomonstrous
In my experience as a mathematician, most for profit journal publishing
companies are essentially rentiers making money off a captive clientele, who
don't even get much utility any more from them, except for access to some
older articles. Moreover, the services they provide to authors are also
usually worse than the non-profit journals: no copy editing, crappy editorial
tools, just a complete disregard for the actual producers of the (free)
content they make money off. It's a complete and unmitigated scam.

~~~
FabHK
Ceterum censeo Elsevier esse delendum.

~~~
lorenzhs
Wouldn't it be _Elsevierum_? You need an accusative, and _–er_ nouns tend to
be second declension iirc.

~~~
FabHK
Yes, accusative, but I'm not sure how to decline it :-) (apparently it's a
Dutch name of Arab/Moorish origin, also spelt Elzevir).

~~~
FabHK
Just occurred to me: We could consider it neutral, and then nominative =
accusative...

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jpalomaki
Playing devil's advocate: Sci-Hub is good thing for the publishers. Instead of
revolting, those who can't afford (or don't want) to pay the high subscription
fees for journals will just quietly use Sci-Hub. People can still continue
publishing their papers via the same high profile journals and achieve a wide
distribution without moving to open access scheme. Publishers may loose some
money, but high profile institutions probably don't see Sci-hub as real
alternative and continue paying.

In a similar fashion software piracy can actually help large, established
players. Take for example Photoshop, which back in the days was quite pirated
piece of software. Adobe certainly lost some money, but I think the main
losers were cheaper alternatives. Young and poor pirated Photoshop, learned to
use it and when they got employed wanted to continue using Photoshop since
that was the only package they really knew. If piracy had not been an option,
many would probably have gone for other, more affordable alternatives.

~~~
arthur_trudeau
Economists would label it basic price discrimination, albeit with a floor of
0, and as a way to suppress competition rather than capture value on the low
end.

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dredmorbius
So long as we're looking at intellectual property, and arguments against it:

An online book by UCLA economics professors Michele Boldrin and Mark Levine,
making the case against intellectual property -- patents, and copyright most
especially.

The opening chapter leads off with the patent battles of James Watt, which are
credited by some authors with setting back the start date of the Industrial
Revolution from 1769, when the patent was issued, to 1800, when it (after
parliamentary extension) finally expired.

[http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstne...](http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstnew.htm)

Joseph Stiglitz, "Knowledge as a Global Public Good," in Global Public Goods:
International Cooperation in the 21st Century, Inge Kaul, Isabelle Grunberg,
Marc A. Stern (eds.), United Nations Development Programme, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999, pp. 308-325.

[http://s1.downloadmienphi.net/file/downloadfile6/151/1384343...](http://s1.downloadmienphi.net/file/downloadfile6/151/1384343.pdf)

~~~
Bartweiss
Interesting side note: the book itself is copyright Cambridge University
Press. The authors have a free version accessible online and a promise to keep
it that way, but seemingly no open license on it.

I don't blame them, probably not much choice to get a decent print run, but
it's an interesting display of how pervasive copyright is.

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quickben
This round is going to be fun.

See, I'm old enough to remember this battle starting for music and movies. We
know how that ended.

But now, it's for the very knowledge that drives our civilization.

"Stallman was right", oh how that statement is going to get tested.

~~~
IshKebab
This is quite different to music and film for a variety of reasons:

1\. Film and music were always _vaguely_ reasonably priced, and collecting a
fee is totally reasonable - at least some of the money goes to the creators.
This is not true for papers. The authors are never paid and the prices are
insane.

2\. Music & videos are luxuries, and are also somewhat fungible. If you need a
specific paper (e.g. because it was referenced by another) you usually can't
just swap it for another.

3\. The actual files are usually a lot smaller than music and definitely
smaller than films, so it will be easier to share entire libraries and hence
harder to stop.

4\. Morality is clearly on the side of sci-hub. Music/film piracy is much more
ambiguous.

~~~
vanderZwan
Regarding point 4: piracy has provided the ability to masses to a wealth of
obscure, hard to find cultural gems. I for example am into animation. There is
no way I would have been able to access, legal or otherwise, half of the films
I have seen, many of which are cultural milestones in the history of
animation.

Also, in wealth terms, if you start with the reasonable assumption that a
pirated copy doesn't directly translate to a sales loss, then piracy can be
argued to be a net plus, since vastly more people "profit" from it (the people
who download) than there are people who suffer from it (the people being
pirated).

Just wanted to mention those arguments, since I rarely hear them in these
discussions.

~~~
euyyn
> if you start with the reasonable assumption that a pirated copy doesn't
> directly translate to a sales loss

I think the reasonable assumption is that it translates on average to a
fraction of a sale loss; less than one, but more than zero.

~~~
vanderZwan
Even that is debatable, because it also creates exposure. This is especially
true for non-mainstream stuff. So you might end up with a net sales-win
because of the "advertising"

~~~
euyyn
There's never been any impediment to people giving away their music for free
to create exposure. To radio stations, TV, movies, as free concerts, as mp3s
to download from their website, whatever.

The argument "I'm pirating the fruit of your work and investment against your
will, but trust me it'll be in your best interest, I know your interest better
than you do" is untenable.

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nsaslideface
It is rare that true heroism can be framed as a catchy story. Those working
for campaign finance reform is another example. People who fight "David-like"
against these Goliaths are doing extremely radical work, and they will be
canonized in the coming centuries. They don't get the semi-celebrity of
Snowden or Ellsberg in the present day because they lack the whistleblower
story of one person verses the full power of the federal government - the only
sort of punishments they face are an unsexy sinking into obscurity, or a quiet
snuffing-out such as with Aaron Swartz.

~~~
aaron-lebo
"True heroism" is raising your kid well because it's the right thing to do
even though nobody except your kid and maybe grandkid will ever know what you
did.

These people have gotten their acknowledgments (as they should), let's not act
like they are nobodies in the shadow of history. You're reading about them on
HN precisely because media knows who they are. How many people have
documentaries made about them after they are dead?

~~~
nsaslideface
I understand where you're coming from, but I was more focusing on the
difference between a household name (e.g. MLK, Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela)
verses being the subject of a footnote or a chapter in books that are only
read by graduate students. I meant heroism in terms of securing advances for
the whole human race or an entire country, rather than being a hero to another
individual or family...two meanings of the word "hero" that can't be compared.

~~~
aaron-lebo
You're right.

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kronos29296
I am a person who has been benefited by Sci-Hub immensely and hope that it
continues to stay just like the Libgen project. Journal publishers need to
wake up and get their wits together and do something.

It used to be proprietary Software everywhere before GNU and Linux. Nowadays
FSF has made FLOSS a good thing. Today we have FOSS everywhere. Even Microsoft
which used to be a bastion of proprietary software now has Open Source
projects.

Something similar to that needs to sweep the Academic publishing world
otherwise progress will only slow down due to closed nature of existing
literature.

------
Toast_
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he
dreams himself your master." \- Pravin Lal, Alpha Centauri.

~~~
Baeocystin
So many pithy quotes, that game. Lightning really struck when they made it.

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jccalhoun
I'm an academic and I have access to most journals through my college's
library. I still use sci-hub all the time simply because it is much easier
than the legal method where I have to go to my university's library page, log
in, search for the article that I already found, struggle with the shitty
search to find the article that I already found through google, then click the
link to the database, then I get to download the article I already found 10
minutes ago.

Or I could just click the bookmarlet to search scihub...

~~~
Bedon292
Does your college not offer integration with google scholar? Go into the
settings and check 'Library Links.' Scholar then gives me a link directly
through the library proxy if the University has access to the Journal. It is
amazing, but I have always wondered how many people have access, or even know
it exists.

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jccalhoun
it doesn't for some reason. If I go into the settings for google scholar my
university is greyed out. The college I did my phd at had it though and that
was nice.

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mmmnn
Does anyone know how Elbakyan was 'outed' as the creator of Sci-Hub? When I
first started using it, it all seemed quite secretive as to the creator's
identity. Was this something uncovered during the lawsuit?

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kanzure
I am not completely sure, but I think I doxxed her by accident on public IRC
on 2013-07-06 (
[http://gnusha.org/logs/2013-07-05.log](http://gnusha.org/logs/2013-07-05.log)
; someone else edited the public logs ("strangeland") to try to minimize my
damage to her).

I recognized the rotated scihub admin profile picture because I had met her in
person at a Harvard conference in 2010. She was on my pidgin buddy list, of
all things.

Opsec is super important, y'all. Even someone who likes scihub (such as
myself) might accidentally doxx you when they get all excited about finding
who you are (such as I did). I get the sense from the rotated profile pic and
subsequent self-publicity that maybe anonymity hasn't been a top priority for
her the whole time, maybe she had her name on it earlier than 2013?

I should have exercised more caution.

~~~
Bartweiss
Huh, fascinating. In all the stories about Elbakyan, I can't seem to find any
reference to when she was first revealed as the Sci-Hub founder. It'd be sort
of wild if this was how it came about.

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jancsika
Would it be illegal for a person to publicly claim that they would mirror
content from sci-hub _if_ N other scientists also made the same public claim?

Further, suppose a person anonymously made a copy of a partial snapshot of
sci-hub content. Would it be illegal for that person to post a public search
engine that responds to requests for articles from the collection with a only
the hash of that document?

Finally, suppose N scientists have the above public hash engines and claim
they will mirror a randomly chosen part of sci-hub content when N+1 scientists
make the same claim. For what value of N would you be willing to mirror sci-
hub content?

~~~
tomjen3
NAL, but (in the US) almost certainly not. After all stating the following
is/was legal:

They always holler at us to get an education. And now I have already received
my draft classification as 1-A and I have got to report for my physical this
Monday coming. I am not going. If they ever make me carry a rifle the first
man I want to get in my sights is L. B. J.

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_lm_
I wonder if closed-access publishing is part of why academia seems so
insluated from the "real world". People write for their audience, and if the
general public can't read academic papers, then academics are going to write
as if only other academics are reading.

Likewise, if research output is difficult to access, the feedback loop between
ideas and implementation is broken; folks outside academia can't easily
comment on the cutting edge work in a field, and academics only have to worry
about what other academics think of their work.

~~~
KGIII
I need to say this carefully.

Some things can't be written for a general audience. It can not be distilled
that much.

That isn't to suggest that citizen scientists should be discouraged, just that
some things are actually pretty difficult to explain and to grasp.

To be very clear, I support open publishing. I just feel obligated to point
out that most of the general public isn't going to understand and it isn't
ever going to be written with them in mind.

I'm a mathematician. I don't understand some of it.

~~~
tomjen3
Math is one thing. I did a lot of research into bio to check if Aspartame was
dangerous, and while I didn't understand everything I was able to gleam
enough.

I have also read many psycology papers, never had a problem with them.

~~~
KGIII
Excellent. Again, I don't ever want to discourage learning. I just know many
will not. That and, well, some of it can be pretty rough to digest.

But, absolutely keep reading, learning, growing, and sharing. I'm just not
going to publish with the general public being the intended audience. On the
other hand, I'm more than happy to try to explain stuff, for those who are
curious.

I'd never discourage a citizen scientist. Never.

~~~
tomjen3
Oh I didn't think you wanted to discourage anybody - I just wanted to point
out that of the different sciencies theoretical math is probably the most
difficult for an outsider to get and psychology is surprisingly easy.

~~~
KGIII
Ah... That makes sense. I had another person reply as if I were suggesting I
weren't for open access - even though I specifically mentioned it. Thus, I was
improperly primed, methinks.

But, absolutely... The idea of the citizen scientist is so important to me. I
have some complains about the scientific community but this may not be the
place for that.

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onikolas
Worth noting: Many authors will be happy to email you a copy of their paper.
People understand that not everyone's library can pay the hundreds of
thousands needed for subscription fees. Research Gate has this functionality
built in. Also, everyone likes to be cited :)

Being easy to circumvent is a big reason why these for profit journals still
exist.

~~~
mirimir
True, but I doubt that would scale, for popular papers that got press
coverage. Authors could automate, of course. But do for-profit journals limit
reprint distribution?

~~~
onikolas
In my field (computer graphics) most conferences have put clauses allowing
authors to host the submitted version of the paper in their websites. Far from
ideal, but some compromises from the part of the publishers have been made.

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nyolfen
elbakyan surely belongs to the category of contemporary outlaw-/folk-heroes.
at least she is in my personal pantheon.

~~~
apathy
I send her $5 a month and it's 1000x more valuable than HBO go or any of that
sort of shit.

She is quite simply a hero, full stop.

~~~
heliophobicdude
If you don't minD telling us, how do we send her money to support her?

~~~
iak8god
[http://sci-hub.cc/](http://sci-hub.cc/) lists a bitcoin address for donations

~~~
Baeocystin
Thanks. I was looking for something like that. Are we certain that the .cc
subdomain is under her control?

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mtgx
Why isn't Google allowing the Sci-Hub extension in its Chrome store?

This is why it sucks to have app stores and walled gardens. The vendors
effectively become censorship agents for states. And Microsoft wants to take
us in the same direction with Windows 10 S.

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manquer
I wouldn't call chrome a walled garden, it is just curated list, if you don't
like it you don't have to use the "store" . You can still install the
extension without the store. There are plenty of extensions they reject and
you can download, same for android(for ex:F-droid). You can maintain your own
curated list in your own app store. Google will get sued if they allow listing
in the store.

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pawadu
Slightly off-topic:

I downloaded the same file both directly from IEEE and sci-hub and the
checksum did not match. I am a bit worried that sci-hub is/will be used to
spread malware.

~~~
fao_
Was the version of the paper the same?

~~~
pawadu
Same version, different checksums.

As new299 mentioned, this could be due to watermarking.

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pks016
Related to this, I have one question.

Suppose one is going to write a paper and he need to add a reference of
another paper which he has got from Sci-hub. So is there any check or any
sorts of things of originality of reference paper ?

(I don't know exactly how publishing works)

~~~
_lm_
It doesn't matter how you get a copy of the paper; the citation is the same
either way. Plenty of academics have been passing around PDF copies of papers
their libraries don't buy access to for years before this!

~~~
TeMPOraL
Also relatively recently though probably pre-SciHub, #ICanHazPDF hashtag was
widely used on Twitter to request a paper from whoever happens to have access
to it.

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aaron-lebo
_This means it is our duty to the citizens to reduce our publishing expenses
to no more than currently ~US$200m per year (and we would even increase the
value of the literature by making it open to boot!). If we were to do that,
we’d have US$9.8b every single year to buy all the different infrastructure
solutions that already exist to support all our intellectual outputs, be that
text, data or code._

Is is also our duty as the people to reduce all expenditures on software? Is
piracy justifiable especially within government institutions?

I guess my point is that _necessary_ is a really strong claim and you can
justify a lot of crazy stuff with that. Scientific progress has continued on
just fine despite these cartels. With no supporting evidence I'd argue that
today's scholars have hundreds of times the free information available than
they did a century ago and that ramps up the further you go back. It's easy to
imagine that Elsevier's lockdown of a paper is the difference between an
academic breakthrough or not, but in reality that's probably not the case,
even if it's a noble cause.

~~~
tacomonstrous
I don't believe the publishing model is significantly impeding progress in
science , but that doesn't change the fact that the publishing companies are
simply leeches, profiting off the work and labor of others. It's worth
breaking that up, because there's no actual value there.

~~~
crispinb
As a layperson who hasn't looked into this in detail, I can't tell whether or
not the academic publishing racket has impeded sciences. But I do know it
impedes public access to the findings of research that is frequently supported
in whole or part with public money.

That public access to its own research is a good is clearly recognised (at
least here in Australia) by universities, most of whose libraries are open to
the public (as are the databases via in-library PCs, but not remotely). But
you must be near one for this to be practically useful.

