Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sci-Hub: Removing barriers in the way of science

sci-hub.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 225 posts

Re: Sci-Hub: Removing barriers in the way of science

#121

Post by singold »

Kristine1975 wrote: post #81
tombrossman wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does HTTPS help circumvent firewalls? I wasn't aware this was a feature. My understanding is that a firewall blocking file-sharing sites would do so whether the site was HTTP or HTTPS. My point is that by using HTTPS, these sites have demonstrated a higher level of proficiency with security tools than many more popular mainstream sites. I agree the scammy fake download buttons are a problem though, but that's wha…

How does HTTPS help circumvent firewalls? The firewall cannot do deep packet inspection on encrypted connections, since it cannot decrypt the data: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_packet_inspection

But AFAIK they can block the whole domain, when you access an https site any proxy or firewall you have can see the domain but nothing more.

For example a firewall would see that you entered Google.com but not what you searched

Re: Sci-Hub: Removing barriers in the way of science

#122

Post by olympus »

thesimon wrote: post #111
temp wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Alexandra Elbakyan, a researcher from Kazakhstan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub

>Despite seizure of the websites as ordered by a New York district court on October 28, 2015, the site is still accessible through alternative domains as of December 2015. So a court in the United States could seize a site just because the plaintiff was based there? Or because the .org domain registry (PIR) is based in the US?

A little bit of both. A US citizen can sue foreign nationals in US courts, but a judgement can't be enforced unless the foreign national steps foot in the US or has a US based asset. In this case, the .org domain is controlled on US soil, so that's about all the court can do unless some crazy extradition arrangement is made or she accidentally forgets and comes to the US for a conference or something.

Re: Sci-Hub: Removing barriers in the way of science

#123

Post by cfcef »

max_ wrote: post #112

How is this diffrent(better) from http://arxiv.org ?

Arxiv is a voluntary service where authors upload their own papers. It covers a few hundred thousand papers, probably, since authors have to know about it, want to use it, and have copyright service; it covers only a few areas of science where Arxiv use is in vogue, and only from the past decade or two.

Whereas, SH/Libgen acquire copies of tens of millions of papers from everyone everywhere everywhen.

It's the difference between a local library and the Library of Congress.

Re: Sci-Hub: Removing barriers in the way of science

#125

Post by zbjornson »

tosseraccount wrote: post #41
travjones wrote: post #19

I've used sci-hub a few times. It's a little buggy and not every article can be accessed, but it works well enough to try when I'm not on campus. $30 to read a single article is ridiculous anyway and presents a barrier to scientists who don't have, can't afford, or don't want to pay for access. I hope sci-hub stays up and improves for some time.

Most papers have some to all public funding behind them. Even papers from Stanford and MIT. Shouldn't the public have free access? We paid for them.

The NIH now requires that NIH-funded research publications be made open-access upon acceptance. They're usually on pubmed central. These tend to be the ugly author manuscripts instead of the typeset format but at least they're available.

https://publicaccess.nih.gov/

Re: Sci-Hub: Removing barriers in the way of science

#126

Post by nols »

thesimon wrote: post #111
temp wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Alexandra Elbakyan, a researcher from Kazakhstan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub

>Despite seizure of the websites as ordered by a New York district court on October 28, 2015, the site is still accessible through alternative domains as of December 2015. So a court in the United States could seize a site just because the plaintiff was based there? Or because the .org domain registry (PIR) is based in the US?

The US says it can seize all domains whose registrars are based in the US, so .com, .org, .net, etc are all vulnerable.

Re: Sci-Hub: Removing barriers in the way of science

#127

Post by qft »

gavazzy wrote: post #115
max_ wrote: post #112

How is this diffrent(better) from http://arxiv.org ?

Arxiv is by its nature open access; Arxiv does not charge for access. On the other hand, the articles that this site hosts require payment to access. The journals typically charge $30 / article, or roughly $2,000 / year subscription. Note that for both the open access or paid journals, researchers do NOT receive any compensation when users download articles. That is, despite the research being mostly paid by taxpayer…

Not only the researchers do not receive any compensation, they actually need to PAY the publishers hundreds of dollars minimum to get their work published.

Re: Sci-Hub: Removing barriers in the way of science

#128

Post by cing »

yason wrote: post #47

Is there a tarball of the data somewhere that one could download, redistribute and host somewhere (on the darknet, assumedly)?

Library Genesis, which also includes scientific articles and provides storage for sci-hub, provides a large series of dataset dumps as torrents, http://libgen.io/repository_torrent/

Re: Sci-Hub: Removing barriers in the way of science

#130

Post by leereeves »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #116

It paints a bulls-eye on her back and its use of the term "piracy" to "free knowledge" doesn't flow well in western sentiments. While I get that the "booty" she is stealing are the fees that the journals would like you to charge, the acts she are creating are more like a librarian letting people check out books without a library card because she has an infinite supply of said books. I am hoping that the rent-seeking…

The narrative on copyright has been dominated by big media because every political narrative has been dominated by big media and big money.

Those of us who get information from relatively unfiltered and uncontrolled sources via the Internet have long had a different perspective on copyright than those who don't.

I too hope that big media's control of the conversation is coming to an end - but they won't lose that control without a fight.

Post reply on HN