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Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

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Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#81

Post by rwnspace »

ksk wrote: post #62

Why are people breaking copyright law, instead of questioning the researchers who voluntarily approach the journals? Why not ask the researchers if they'd consider sharing their work? Or convince them of an alternative means of publication. There is no one-handed clap.

I think people often do approach researchers. It's just nigh-on impossible to expect researchers not to try and get published in Nature, for example. The effect on credentials (and career) is too great. And of course the department they work for will be pushing for it too.

Besides being the main source of academic esteem, there is a serious structural issue where Elsevier et al receive publicly-funded knowledge, yet privately control the supply. The model seriously warps the production of research (and, arguably, the reproduction - p-hacking, fiddling with your regressions/covariants).

Using Sci-hub can be considered a form of protest. Perhaps 'break copyright law' is not a universalisable rule in the spirit of Kant, but the same is true of most forms of activism.

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#82

Post by acqq »

kevingrahl wrote: post #69
DmenshunlAnlsis wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In over twenty years of piracy, I’ve never actually met someone online who got something more than a pissy email from an ISP. It’s possible to be made an example of, but if you’re not profiting from the piracy it’s vanishingly unlikely. The only people I know of who got more than a token fine were involved in some other criminal enterprise besides just downloading something.

I can tell that you’re not from Germany or know anyone from here that pirates. There are special law firms (Waldorf Frommer comes to mind) specializing only on sending out cease and desist letters carrying fines of around 1.000€ per infringement (mostly movies and tv shows). ISP’s willingly hand over any customer data to those firms. Of course the only one benefiting from this is the law firms not the copyright holde…

So what did you do after you received such letters? It seems you haven't paid. How?

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#83

Post by rolandog »

mirimir wrote: post #42
_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can still make examples out of individuals. A good VPN is probably a better increaser of safety.

This can't be said too much! Torrenting anything potentially problematic without using a reputable VPN service is foolish . And make sure that the machine is firewalled, to block all traffic (including DNS requests) not using the VPN. Only the VPN client should have direct Internet connectivity. For extremely sensitive material, it's prudent to use nested VPN chains. So no one provider knows both who/where you are, a…

Thanks, mirimir. I live in a country that's been having a lot of trouble recently with crimes against the freedom of the press and this may actually help me recover some peace of mind when writing anything that might upset powerful people.

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#84

Post by ksk »

s0rce wrote: post #68
ksk wrote: post #62

Why are people breaking copyright law, instead of questioning the researchers who voluntarily approach the journals? Why not ask the researchers if they'd consider sharing their work? Or convince them of an alternative means of publication. There is no one-handed clap.

It can take days to weeks to hear back from a busy researcher to get a copy of their paper. Half the time you skim it and determine that its not useful. Sci-hub is instant.

Right, and that sort of delay can slow down the academic process. I agree with you that the current situation sucks. I'm not seeing how torrenting publications is a viable solution to this problem. This sends the signal to the publications that they're important and that their product is valuable enough to break the law. Naturally, no person wants to be out of a job, and the first course of action they're going to seek is to stop the torrenting in any way possible.

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#85

Post by tempay »

ksk wrote: post #65
jacquesm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely not. But you could have some interesting discussions about morality and the legality of hoarding publicly funded scientific results behind paywalls.

There is a very very simple fix for this. Convince the researchers to either self-publish or use a non-paywalled publication/journal.

It’s not that easy unfortunately. Many of the stronger advocates for open access are younger researchers who can’t self-publish as they need to be able to list their peer reviewed publications. Also the choice of journal is often made by more senior academics who don’t always hold the same views. It can also often have associated costs which aren’t small.

I think pre-print servers like arXiv[1] are a good stepping stone to full open access, though even their use can be complicated in some fields.

EDIT: In the UK there are efforts to stop counting closed access publications in various rankings as a result of the Finch report. It’s a new policy change but I already see it having a positive impact.

[1] https://arxiv.org/

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#86

Post by jMyles »

ksk wrote: post #71
jMyles wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone lives in a jurisdiction where copyright law exists. Among those who do, not everyone lives in a jurisdiction where this action is a violation of that law. Of those who do, not everyone recognizes copyright law as legitimate or binding on their conduct.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_all

By posting this link, are you trying to indicate a belief that I am exhibiting this fallacy?

Can you explain how?

GP asked, "Why are people breaking copyright law?"

I thought I gave a reasonably solid explanation - some of the people in question aren't breaking copyright law while others (certainly a good number of people here on HN) don't regard copyright law as a legitimate imposition of state power in the information age.

What did I do wrong?

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#87

Post by rasmusei »

jancsika wrote: post #48

Has anyone with uni lib credentials done random hash checks on some of the PDFs from sci-hub?

Not sure that would work, since pdfs are usually marked or prepended with some metadata about download time and the library upon download. At least that's the case with my uni library.

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#88

Post by davnn »

ksk wrote: post #71
jMyles wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone lives in a jurisdiction where copyright law exists. Among those who do, not everyone lives in a jurisdiction where this action is a violation of that law. Of those who do, not everyone recognizes copyright law as legitimate or binding on their conduct.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_all

Wow.. it’s a shame that this article is tied to the beautiful subject of logic.

I’m pretty sure you can come up with such an article for any phrase you’d ever encounter.

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#90

Post by glangdale »

ComodoHacker wrote: post #70
Kognito wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an undergraduate in the UK whose university doesn’t have the greatest subscription collection, Sci-Hub has literally enabled me to write my dissertation as there is no way I could have afforded the individual cost of the papers I’ve needed to reference. I can only imagine what it is like in poorer parts of the world in terms of access to subscriptions, or lack thereof.

Let me ask you a provocative question. When you build credibility in your field, will you be reviewing papers for free for open access journals?

Given peer review is unpaid and so is authorship, I am curious as to why you think this is a provocative question?

I would imagine that reviewing papers for free is usually considered part of 'service' to the field and the imagined tradeoff here has far more to do with whether the journal is influential or not, and almost nothing to do with pay or access policies.

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