
Thousands of scientific papers uploaded to The Pirate Bay - nextparadigms
http://gigaom.com/2011/07/21/pirate-bay-jstor/
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araneae
"Thousands of scientific papers uploaded to The Pirate Bay"

Is it any surprise that the fed is attacking torrent sites? Even a tech news
site puts incorrect titles on its news articles.

He didn't upload papers to the Pirate Bay, he uploaded a 165kb torrent file to
the Pirate Bay.

It may sound like semantics but it has real legal repercussions.

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rimmjob
" a .torrent file pointing to thousands of scientific papers has just been
uploaded to the pirate bay" doesnt really fit into a headline

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rjprins
"Thousands of scientific papers were shared via The Pirate Bay"

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sp332
This is still pretty misleading. TPB only hosts the .torrent file, they don't
have _any_ of the contents of the files being shared. They don't even run a
tracker anymore! Any method of distributing a small file to a large number of
people would have worked in the _exact_ same way. The only thing TPB has that
(e.g.) Google Docs doesn't is mindshare.

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lhnz
They don't run a tracker anymore?! Are they using other people's trackers or
just the DHT feature?

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sp332
The .torrent file can list multiple trackers. If it includes TPB's old
trackers, connections will fail but the DHT and other trackers usually manage
just fine. In fact, TPB said that trackers are obsolete ("not up-to-date") and
that everyone should just use DHT and peer exchange (PEX) instead of relying
on centralized trackers from now on. Some people still use trackers, but it's
not really necessary.

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sitkack
Please don't conflate the pay walls with public domain, these journal articles
are clearly in the public domain. And they should not be behind a pay wall.

Locking in of the worlds historical knowledge is even worse, I think, than
locking in current research. The economic return to the holders of the keys to
the garden have no moral or legal right to assert control over the this
knowledge, when their articles of incorporation most likely expose the oposite
of their actions. These organizations are greedy wholesale hypocrites.

~~~
pestaa
I'm no legal expert, but I'd guess it's illegal to sell what is in the public
domain. Why hasn't anybody done anything?

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kotrin
We sell water don't we?

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MiguelHudnandez
Exactly, you can charge for providing access to anything, as long as you are
not obstructing public property to do so.

Even if the works are in the public domain, the copies that you maintain are
yours and you can charge for access to those copies.

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MetaMan
Taking things on face value I congratulate him. There's been a few times when
I've tried to access an interesting academic paper only to find that it's only
available behind some pay- wall.

Why should we have to pay for a scientific paper if it was produced by a
public funded institution?

What's the long term effect on the spread and advancement of knowledge if
access is restricted and "gamed" for profit?

If he's sued (against assuming I properly understand the issues here) I'll
probably contribute to his defence because he's acting in everyone's interest.

~~~
bborud
once you start taking a closer look at academic publishing practices quite a
lot of it ranges from "silly" to "morally questionable".

and not just in publishing.

there's particularly one practice that I find particularly distasteful, and
that is the practice of putting the names of people who had nothing to do with
the publicaion on papers. either to market the paper itself ("ooh, look, I
have a famous professor's name next to mine!") or to boost the publication
list of some tenured has-been.

a few years ago there was a scandal here in Norway. a doctor got caught
fabricating research results. as the shitstorm hit the media his "co-authors"
(none of which seemed to have done any of the work or the writing, and some of
which denied even knowing about the paper) ran for cover. oh and how they ran.

I must say that I found it somewhat questionable that they didn't get thrown
out of academia for having put their name on a piece of fraudulent bullshit.
if the paper was good enough to put their name on it should be good enough to
stand by.

it ought to be a mandatory practice to mark these frauds in publication lists
and databases as such: frauds.

most I have talked to who are still in academia defend the practice. and when
they run out of sensible arguments in its favor, which they inevitably do,
they go with the old "well, it is how it is done. so we shouldn't rock the
boat".

quite a few of these people have a change of heart after leaving academia. or
after having a re-think about ethics and honesty and why it really, really
matters if you are to call what you are doing "science".

~~~
loup-vaillant
[…] I find particularly distasteful […] the practice of putting the names of
people who had nothing to do with the publication on papers.

I heard an argument that I find difficult to take down: even though you may
write a paper alone, the research it is based on probably wasn't done alone.
Even if you did your research alone, it likely stands on the research done by
your lab mates. Even if it doesn't, you don't _really_ work alone. You talk to
people, most notably your advisor, or your research director (depending on
your position). Whether you know it or not, those conversations gives your
insights that shouldn't go un-thanked.

The bottom line is, it's a team, and the signature should reflect that
(non-)reality.

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CWuestefeld
I don't buy that argument. A person who is responsible for nothing more than
the research research ought not to be an "author" of the paper. Research is
nothing but data; the choice of what research to use, and the conclusions
drawn from that data, are what make the paper.

The argument you cite does not support listing all those folks as authors. For
example, one could have papers "Authored by X, featuring original research by
J, K, and L".

~~~
loup-vaillant
Oh, I don't buy that argument either. But I have heard it in more subtle
forms. I just didn't know how to convince the very people that use it of its
invalidity.

For that matter, your suggestion to classify the various authors by the nature
of their contribution should shatter my argument to pieces. Adding something
like "supervised by C" should blow those pieces to smithereens.

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ams6110
_... Scientific publications are some of the most outrageously expensive
pieces of literature you can buy. In the past, the high access fees supported
the costly mechanical reproduction of niche paper journals, but online
distribution has mostly made this function obsolete._

Another reason they are so expensive might be that the reprints are almost
always expenses against research grants, so there is little in the way of
"market forces" working to keep the price commensurate with the true value.

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Maro
It's interesting to note that the person who created this torrent, Greg
Maxwell, is not trying to remain anonymous, he put his name and email into the
torrent description.

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andresmh
...and a bitcoin address

~~~
efnx
Definitely in the event that he needs help paying legal fees.

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repos
Scientific publications/journals are highly ineffective, but what is the
alternative? The current system is so entrenched in the politics of science -
you need publications in respectable journals to advance your career or to get
grants.

It's going to be very difficult to break.

~~~
Produce
I've got an idea about this in the concept phase. Think OSS meets science.

~~~
nightski
Don't think this will work out as well. Not only can you get paid to do OSS,
but we (programmers) also have the option of obtaining very high paying jobs
while working on OSS projects on the side. Not only this, but lots of research
requires quite a bit more expensive equipment than writing software. I mean I
would love to see something like this work but I have my doubts :)

~~~
Produce
I'm not looking to profit from this so I'll give you a brief summary of the
concept.

Essentially, the idea is to remove, or at the least, decrease, political
influence over science. The problem right now is that very few scientists can
research things which actually interest them. Often, they are working for a
company which is attempting to make more money, or the military, which is
attempting to kill more people, or academia, where the idea is to get the most
prestige. All of those things directly decrease the quality of research and
have no place in science.

As a scientist, I could go onto this site, write up a hypothesis and outline
the experiment that needs to be performed to test it. Then, people who have an
interest in the particular piece of research could provide funding, loan
equipment or even directly contribute by becoming part of the team. After the
experiment has been completed, the results are released in the public domain
(this also helps to break up the monopoly that scientific publication have).
Crowd sourcing is then utilised to verify the findings and discuss their
implications.

To put it another way, science should be something that everyone can do, given
enough free time and determination, yet, as things are, only a select few get
to do this and often have to deal with mountains of politics to get to that
stage.

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sp332
original posted here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2789709>

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ac-slater
Interesting. This appears to be Greg Maxwell (gmaxwell) from Xiph.

Xiph is an organization that respects software patents. (As opposed to various
other multimedia efforts like VideoLAN and libav that ignore them).

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4J7z0Fgt63dTZbs
so where's the torrent?

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nickythegreek
[http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6554331/Papers_from_Philosop...](http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6554331/Papers_from_Philosophical_Transactions_of_the_Royal_Society__fro)

~~~
slowpoke
I'm gonna seed the fuck out of this. There's always place for knowledge on my
HDDs, and there will always be bandwidth I can sacrifice for spreading that
knowledge.

I dare to say: For science!

