Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers • Hacker News Board

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#241

Post by njarboe » Mon, May 21, 2018, 10:33 PM UTC

sevensor wrote: post #205

DrBazza wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really an excuse - it truly is convenient in such a way that you only have to go to one place to get the thing you want. If I want Man in the High Castle, I have to pay for Amazon. But if I want Ozark, I need to pay for Netflix. If I want to watch Metropolis, or The Raven, or The Maltese Falcon, they're old and not any streaming service, even if the rights are owned by a studio. Where can I find them? Yup, b…

The selection of movies on Netflix is beyond dismal. If it's not from the last 15 years, your chances of finding it are virtually nil. If it is from the last 15 years, your chances are merely terrible. The demise of video stores has left me with no idea how I'd (legally) watch an old movie short of purchasing the DVD. Strange that widespread access to classic movies only lasted about 20 years -- from the mid '80s to…

If you are into classic movies I'd imagine that you would still subscribe to the Netflix DVD mail service. Millions of other do. I'd say that is widespread access to old movies, just not widespread interest.

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#242

Post by needToSay » Mon, May 21, 2018, 10:34 PM UTC

ksk wrote: post #240

bborud wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is inefficient and change is unlikely?

Breaking copyright law doesn't change anything either. People are still going to publish in those journals. It doesn't address the central problem.

Fuck off shill

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#243

Post by jMyles » Mon, May 21, 2018, 10:38 PM UTC

ksk wrote: post #239

jMyles wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who has communicated to you that they don't recognize copyright law as legitimate or binding? Why is the number statistically relevant? To my personally? Only maybe a few dozen. But obviously these laws are ignored everywhere and by everyone in the USA. Surely you don't mean to suggest that it's a law that enjoys widespread perception of legitimacy? What makes you think people have any interest in following this la…

You might want to read up about the Berne convention, various international copyright treaties and such. You can "ignore" laws, but you might find yourself in handcuffs on a plane, clutching an extradition order if you get popular enough. In any case that is an irrelevant aside as far as I am concerned. I don't wish for people to be jailed over this. >What makes you think people have any interest in following this la…

> Yes, I admit, my argument assumes that normal rational people don't go breaking laws.

I mean, yeah, that's a very strange assumption. Throughout the history of common law societies, normal rational people have indeed gone around breaking bad laws.

Many foundational thinkers, dating back to the magna carta and further, have argued that citizens are morally bound to do this in order for this legal system to work. It's a big part of the basis of the western legal tradition. Of course Henry David Thoreau is the best known, but he's certainly not the first, nor is he an aberration

Take this example: cannabis has been prohibited federally since 1937 - surely you don't think that the persistent, substantial part of the population who has consumed cannabis throughout that time is abnormal or irrational?

...and to add a slight but meaningful nuance: remember that in the tradition of the legal republic, the state is not the sovereign - the individual is. So, each of us has to determine for ourselves which edicts of the state are in fact legitimate laws.

It's a perfectly valid view to hold that copyright or drug prohibition (or whatever) are not legitimate laws. You then have to ascertain the reaction of the state (a reaction which you are free to hold as illegitimate / unlawful) when it finds that its edicts are being disobeyed. It's up to each of us to build community consensus around us to disobey these edicts in keeping with our view of the legitimacy and constitutionality of the law.

We are also free to use our own sensibilities about these laws when deciding to refrain from making a citizen's arrest (this refusal during the fugitive slave law period is part of what led to the creation of slave patrols, some of which have evolved into today's professional police forces) or to refrain from finding guilt as a jury.

By contrast, this discretion is not cognizable for a magistrate or peace officer, whom, at least traditionally, are bound to regard all statutes of their jurisdiction as lawful.

This is a cornerstone of the common law tradition.

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#244

Post by lapinot » Mon, May 21, 2018, 11:08 PM UTC

0xffff2 wrote: post #219

mapt wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course not. Copyright law is extraordinarily restrictive, and you, me, and everybody you know is guilty of violation after violation, easily enough to bankrupt hundreds of millions of people if strict enforcement were applied. SciHub is all normal copyrighted published work; The publishers claim the same commercial status as an album or novel. The fact that there are currently 69 million works bundled means that w…

> Copyright law is extraordinarily restrictive, and you, me, and everybody you know is guilty of violation after violation... That's a pretty extreme claim. Can you give an example of how the average non-bittorrent-using person regularly violates copyright law?

I bet that almost everyone has already copied a friend's drive full of (pirated, old, crappy divx) movies. And doesn't check the copyright for music/pictures they include in material they produce and share (blog, social media, report, art). Academics (even ones not caring about copyright) usually put a lot of their papers on their website even if they handed exclusive rights to some publisher. A lot of amateurs using digital media software use pirate versions they got from some friend on a thumbdrive (photoshop, fl studio, final cut etc). A lot of copyright violations are actually done by people not particularly caring about information sharing just by visiting shady websites (mega and co) or irl friend-of-a-friend propagation. Showing a personal dvd or book scans in a classroom is also a violation. Depending on the terms of service, sharing media subscriptions (newspaper, streaming, tv network) between housholds might be prohibited. Copying cds/dvds from your local library or friends. Reading manga scans. Playing covers at some gig without paying the fees... There's quite a lot of them really! Imho that's showing just how stupid copyright (and patenting) is.

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#245

Post by mirimir » Mon, May 21, 2018, 11:25 PM UTC

rolandog wrote: post #83

mirimir wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That would be very prudent.

And it's arguably good practice for everyone. Good OPSEC.

Why do I say that? Well, even in "free" countries, one never knows how stuff will go down. What will change. It's better to be safe, than to be sorry.

Also, mass adoption helps protect me, and others who love their privacy. Because it makes us less unusual. That's one of the standard arguments for widespread Tor use. But even so, I prefer to obscure my Tor use with VPN services. Because VPNs are still far more common than Tor. In some areas, VPN usage is over 50%.

And finally, it's a great hobby. Better than puttering in the woodshop. Or whatever.

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#246

Post by slrz » Mon, May 21, 2018, 11:43 PM UTC

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…

Still a long shot from black helicopters and cops kicking your doors in.

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#247

Post by wolco » Tue, May 22, 2018, 12:30 AM UTC

sidhu1f wrote: post #197

jacquesm wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piracy has one USP that the competition lacks that is very hard for them to replicate: convenience.

Is BitTorrent more convenient than Netflix?

No but it is more convenient than lesser known streaming services like popcorn or certain kodi plugins that don't work well.

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#248

Post by teamNOOB » Tue, May 22, 2018, 1:33 AM UTC

nneonneo wrote: post #14

The total collection is 54.54 TiB, with 690 torrents as of writing. For preservation purposes, I put magnet links to all the torrents here: https://pastebin.com/zTAqS7wz So, even if the torrents go away, the magnet links should still be usable. (Edited: fixed link)

Do you recommend a seedbox for this? I'm currently with Ultraseedbox which is only 3TB. I am thinking of getting a new service specifically to download then provide another source/host of these files.

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#249

Post by lsc » Tue, May 22, 2018, 3:40 AM UTC

sevensor wrote: post #205

DrBazza wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really an excuse - it truly is convenient in such a way that you only have to go to one place to get the thing you want. If I want Man in the High Castle, I have to pay for Amazon. But if I want Ozark, I need to pay for Netflix. If I want to watch Metropolis, or The Raven, or The Maltese Falcon, they're old and not any streaming service, even if the rights are owned by a studio. Where can I find them? Yup, b…

The selection of movies on Netflix is beyond dismal. If it's not from the last 15 years, your chances of finding it are virtually nil. If it is from the last 15 years, your chances are merely terrible. The demise of video stores has left me with no idea how I'd (legally) watch an old movie short of purchasing the DVD. Strange that widespread access to classic movies only lasted about 20 years -- from the mid '80s to…

If you must stream (if you are up for physical media, last I checked, Netflix was king, and has am incredibly broad catalogue ) try Amazon Prime.

You have to pay a rental fee of like three or four bucks per, just like blockbuster, but they have a much deeper pool of old movies than Netflix Streaming, I think.

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#250

Post by zouhair » Tue, May 22, 2018, 5:31 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #117

logicallee wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wow. I didn't know there were a grand total of dozens of millions of journal articles published total worldwide. My guess would have been hundreds of thousands at most. These are journal articles, not high school book reports, right? I'm astounded at the number you quote. For example there are about 10,000 papers submitted per month to all of arxiv[1] - which is a huge number. That totals 132k per year or so. For the…

There are a lot of scientists and they work hard (and get paid peanuts, which seems unfair).

Unfair and utterly stupid of humanity.