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Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

bjoern.brembs.net

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Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#21

Post by khedoros »

msvan wrote: post #14
khedoros wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe [...] we won't be able to practice it anymore. Do you mean by suppressing the action before it occurs? I thought that one of the points of civil disobedience was to get caught, so as to increase visibility of the problem and become a catalyst for change.

I do mean suppressing ideas before they take root. I don't think getting caught is a necessary part of it. The most worrisome example of today is China, which has an iron grip on the spread of ideas within the country. If China deemed Sci-Hub to be an issue, they would shut it down (via DNS poisoning) and incarcerate anybody who spoke in its favor.

Thanks for the clarification. It's true; if any message can be silenced and any thought wiped out at will before it's even developed, then its hard for even the realization that you're being controlled to spread, let alone any plan to fight against the control.

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#22

Post by eikenberry »

bcook wrote: post #6

I am poor, which I use as my primary excuse to pirate software, movies, books, etc. To those who are not financially struggling: Why do you pirate? What is your moral justification?

The article addresses this quite well...

"In the face of multinational, highly profitable corporations citing mere copyright when human rights (“Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.”) are at stake, civil disobedience of the kind Sci-Hub is a great example of, becomes a societal imperative."

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#23

Post by return0 »

omginternets wrote: post #19

Does anybody know how to find the corresponding torrents for the papers that sci-hub has fetched? Is there some sort of prefix I can punch into torrentz.eu?

i think scihub uses various proxies in multiple universities to fetch the articles.

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#24

Post by return0 »

bcook wrote: post #6

I am poor, which I use as my primary excuse to pirate software, movies, books, etc. To those who are not financially struggling: Why do you pirate? What is your moral justification?

Pirating a movie will probably not save someone's life, however access to knowledge by the right scientist can do that.

Do not conflate that with the more general piracy issue. The way these journals work is basically coercion: scientists are kept in a loop where they have to publish in the traditional journals because that's what gets the funding, and the funding sources use the same system because they (haven't bothered to create another|are afraid to|are lazy). To top it all, university libraries are forced to pay exorbitant annual fees to access the articles that their own staff wrote, corrected and reviewed for free (they even do the pictures for them). And all this is running on taxpayer money, yet the journals don't report to anyone. It's a mad system if you think about it.

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#25

Post by return0 »

jacobolus wrote: post #13
bcook wrote: post #6

I am poor, which I use as my primary excuse to pirate software, movies, books, etc. To those who are not financially struggling: Why do you pirate? What is your moral justification?

If you aren’t affiliated with a university, scientific papers cost something like $30/each to read. If papers can be accessed for free, then the only expense required to follow cutting edge science is time, and everyone with an internet connection can join in. At $30/paper, suddenly only the rich (or those with rich patrons, such as tenured professors at rich universities) can afford to play. Researching a topic, it’…

>all the money goes to a couple of rich corporations, who will use the money to further impede scientific progress

More problematic , the three major publishers are in UK, netherlands and US, which means the rest of the world's scientists donate their science to make these publishers richer.

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#26

Post by AnthonyMouse »

khedoros wrote: post #11
msvan wrote: post #5

Civil disobedience is an important form of democracy. Maybe in the future, when all of our calls, messages and identities are monitored in full by our benevolent overlords, we won't be able to practice it anymore. Right or wrong, faraway anti-Western countries have served as counterweights against the West for Snowden, Assange and Elbakyan.

> Maybe [...] we won't be able to practice it anymore. Do you mean by suppressing the action before it occurs? I thought that one of the points of civil disobedience was to get caught, so as to increase visibility of the problem and become a catalyst for change.

The basic problem with the "original formulation" of civil disobedience is that power structures have evolved to thwart it.

Things that should by any right be a civil case or misdemeanor are instead charged as multiple overlapping felonies in order to coerce a plea bargain, which is effective to deter all but the most dedicated from demanding their day in court. Then the court won't allow you to make the case for jury nullification or any other argument that the law is wrong to the jury, and prosecutors will be allowed to exclude anyone from the jury who is sympathetic to the idea that juries shouldn't convict when they don't agree with the law.

You can only make the case that the law is wrong to the judge, and no matter how stupid the law is the judge can only agree with you if it violates the constitution. Which plenty of very, very stupid laws clearly don't, so you become a convicted felon without having had an opportunity to make your case to anyone with the power to do anything about it.

In theory the outrageous nature of that process should inspire the public to demand change, but have we passed Aaron's Law yet? [1]

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/aarons-law-reintroduce...

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#27

Post by AnthonyMouse »

khedoros wrote: post #21
msvan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do mean suppressing ideas before they take root. I don't think getting caught is a necessary part of it. The most worrisome example of today is China, which has an iron grip on the spread of ideas within the country. If China deemed Sci-Hub to be an issue, they would shut it down (via DNS poisoning) and incarcerate anybody who spoke in its favor.

Thanks for the clarification. It's true; if any message can be silenced and any thought wiped out at will before it's even developed, then its hard for even the realization that you're being controlled to spread, let alone any plan to fight against the control.

Cory Doctorow makes that case all the time. You don't want perfect enforcement because it provides no opportunity to evaluate when the law is wrong. You need somebody to be able to break the law, show what happens and prove that the world doesn't end in order to make the case that the consequences are actually quite alright and we shouldn't have that law anymore.

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#28

Post by bcook »

eikenberry wrote: post #22
bcook wrote: post #6

I am poor, which I use as my primary excuse to pirate software, movies, books, etc. To those who are not financially struggling: Why do you pirate? What is your moral justification?

The article addresses this quite well... "In the face of multinational, highly profitable corporations citing mere copyright when human rights (“Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.”) are at stake, civil disobedience of the kind Sci-Hub is a great example of, becomes a societal imperative."

The article addresses a certain (popular) perspective, not the only perspective.

I agree, papers should be cheaper, but should they be universally free via sci-hub... I dunno.

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#29

Post by nemothekid »

bcook wrote: post #6

I am poor, which I use as my primary excuse to pirate software, movies, books, etc. To those who are not financially struggling: Why do you pirate? What is your moral justification?

"I am poor" is a poor moral justification to pirate software, movies & books. Software, movies and books are written and funded by private individuals, and if you are pirating entertainment its wrong. I'm not the moral police, but "I'm poor" isn't a very good excuse.

The stand I take with Scientific Papers is much different - these papers are backed by institutions which are commonly tax-payer funded or non-profits. As a citizen, you have already paid for the funding of this research and not being able to access that data doesn't seem fair.

It's like if you paid, before hand, to see a movie created, but never allowed to watch it.

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