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Elsevier Complaint Shuts Down Sci-Hub Domain Name

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11–20 of 237 posts

Re: Elsevier Complaint Shuts Down Sci-Hub Domain Name

#11
post #9
post #2

On the bright side, this will give some much-needed publicity to Tor Browser. Sci-hub is still available at http://scihub22266oqcxt.onion/

Does using Tor puts you on some kind of list? It would be tragic if someone used Tor to read a scientific article but then got charged with aiding terrorism or looking for child pornography.

nope. tor is anonymizing software used by many thousands of people. if you're really concerned use a VPN first, and download the tor browser using VPN. unnecessary IMO, but if you're concerned then this will give you an extra layer of protection.

Re: Elsevier Complaint Shuts Down Sci-Hub Domain Name

#12
post #5

While I support open science and Sci-Hub is great, I also can see publisher's side. Imagine the same site with pirated high quality scientific books. (There are some, but in darker corners of the Internet). Would open access to these books be advantageous for humanity? Most definitely. Will publishers get mad about it? Even more definitely. Should publisher's work be free? I think not. However, you can't get both sid…

> Should publisher's work be free? I think not. What value does the publisher's work add to the work the author generated?

> What value does the publisher's work add to the work the author generated?

- organizing peer review - spell-checking and fixing layout problems - making sure that the paper stays available for a long time - handling complaints and retracting fraudulent papers - providing a single point of contact for people who would like to reuse published material (e.g., using illustrations in a textbook).

Sure, many publishers don't do a very good job for the money they are taking. Sure, there might be better approaches for disseminating knowledge than the current one. However, in the world as it is now, publishers can and do provide some value.

Re: Elsevier Complaint Shuts Down Sci-Hub Domain Name

#13
post #9
post #2

On the bright side, this will give some much-needed publicity to Tor Browser. Sci-hub is still available at http://scihub22266oqcxt.onion/

Does using Tor puts you on some kind of list? It would be tragic if someone used Tor to read a scientific article but then got charged with aiding terrorism or looking for child pornography.

Using Tor does put you on some kind of list, but you aren't going to get charged with aiding terrorism or looking for child pornography because of it. Unless you use it for those things, I guess, and get caught.

Re: Elsevier Complaint Shuts Down Sci-Hub Domain Name

#14
post #9
post #2

On the bright side, this will give some much-needed publicity to Tor Browser. Sci-hub is still available at http://scihub22266oqcxt.onion/

Does using Tor puts you on some kind of list? It would be tragic if someone used Tor to read a scientific article but then got charged with aiding terrorism or looking for child pornography.

There's a good chance you'll end up on a list if you're an exit node, but if you're just using Tor I think you should be good.

Re: Elsevier Complaint Shuts Down Sci-Hub Domain Name

#15
post #9
post #2

On the bright side, this will give some much-needed publicity to Tor Browser. Sci-hub is still available at http://scihub22266oqcxt.onion/

Does using Tor puts you on some kind of list? It would be tragic if someone used Tor to read a scientific article but then got charged with aiding terrorism or looking for child pornography.

> Does using Tor puts you on some kind of list? It would be tragic if someone used Tor to read a scientific article but then got charged with aiding terrorism or looking for child pornography.

If it does, it becomes an ethical maxim to use Tor. If it doesn't, then you can simply use Tor. So by case analysis you should use Tor.

Re: Elsevier Complaint Shuts Down Sci-Hub Domain Name

#16
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should publisher's work be free? I think not. What value does the publisher's work add to the work the author generated?

> What value does the publisher's work add to the work the author generated? - organizing peer review - spell-checking and fixing layout problems - making sure that the paper stays available for a long time - handling complaints and retracting fraudulent papers - providing a single point of contact for people who would like to reuse published material (e.g., using illustrations in a textbook). Sure, many publishers d…

I was once tangentially involved in the preparation of a journal. All those things you listed were done for free by professors and grad students.

Re: Elsevier Complaint Shuts Down Sci-Hub Domain Name

#17
post #5

While I support open science and Sci-Hub is great, I also can see publisher's side. Imagine the same site with pirated high quality scientific books. (There are some, but in darker corners of the Internet). Would open access to these books be advantageous for humanity? Most definitely. Will publishers get mad about it? Even more definitely. Should publisher's work be free? I think not. However, you can't get both sid…

> Imagine the same site with pirated high quality scientific books. (There are some, but in darker corners of the Internet).

Library genesis isn't that dark of a corner these days.

http://gen.lib.rus.ec/

http://golibgen.io/

Re: Elsevier Complaint Shuts Down Sci-Hub Domain Name

#18
post #5

While I support open science and Sci-Hub is great, I also can see publisher's side. Imagine the same site with pirated high quality scientific books. (There are some, but in darker corners of the Internet). Would open access to these books be advantageous for humanity? Most definitely. Will publishers get mad about it? Even more definitely. Should publisher's work be free? I think not. However, you can't get both sid…

>>Should publisher's work be free? I think not.

What exact work these publishers are doing? How much are they demanding for that? Who is funding the research? Who is doing the work?

These publishers are just mean middlemen who are trying to extract as much money as they can/want from both the authors and the readers. Now is the time to get rid of them.

Re: Elsevier Complaint Shuts Down Sci-Hub Domain Name

#19
post #5

While I support open science and Sci-Hub is great, I also can see publisher's side. Imagine the same site with pirated high quality scientific books. (There are some, but in darker corners of the Internet). Would open access to these books be advantageous for humanity? Most definitely. Will publishers get mad about it? Even more definitely. Should publisher's work be free? I think not. However, you can't get both sid…

Some of the arguments I've read against publishers are along the lines that they take papers that were funded with public money, and thus in theory are in the public domain, yet they charge an arm and a leg for that information while at the same time preventing anyone else from distributing the free versions.

So how is it that they are entitled to be payed for something they didn't create or even own for that matter? Maybe if they did actually offered an added value service, then the freebie version would be inferior and would be no need to block them from being distributed, since people would just pick their own enhanced (curated?) versions.

As far as I understand it, Elsevier should only have a say on content they actually own the copyright for, which could be a lot of papers, but if I understand correctly SciHub was publishing papers that were funded with public money, is it not? or are they also hosting papers for which the copyright is actually owned by someone else?

Re: Elsevier Complaint Shuts Down Sci-Hub Domain Name

#20
post #5

While I support open science and Sci-Hub is great, I also can see publisher's side. Imagine the same site with pirated high quality scientific books. (There are some, but in darker corners of the Internet). Would open access to these books be advantageous for humanity? Most definitely. Will publishers get mad about it? Even more definitely. Should publisher's work be free? I think not. However, you can't get both sid…

With the advent of the internet, the marginal cost of producing and distributing such content has dropped by orders of magnitude since the 1990's. One would expect in a competitive, healthy economic system, some of this productivity gain would fall to customers in lower prices. This has not happened. While piracy is not the ultimate answer, it may be necessary to force the hand of the businesses and government to restructure. I don't know how/how much publishers should be compensated, but they will not give up their current rent-seeking status unless it is ripped from their cold dead hands. Information production/distribution has become a commodity, and should be priced only to support the value add of peer-review, etc. Meanwhile should authors be compensated? Yes, As an observation from the corner of science that i inhabit: authorship of 'high quality scientific books' is a 'secondary profession' with most authors having primary commitments to academic positions--which are very much enriched by authorship. I believe authors will continue to be compensated both directly and indirectly, as they are providing most of the value in the product.
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