French ISPs Ordered to Block Sci-Hub and LibGen • Hacker News Board

Re: French ISPs Ordered to Block Sci-Hub and LibGen

#251

Post by leereeves » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 1:06 PM UTC

arghwhat wrote: post #243

leereeves wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be clear who's being "pirated" from. Elsevier and Springer don't pay for the research, or for the rights to the paper, or even the peer review. The only compensation they're giving anyone is "exposure". Given how little that is worth these days, the validity of the copyright assignments they hold are questionable at best.

I believe what was being referred to is the legal standpoint. The paid journals are an absurdity, but there is only one right course of action: Not using them. Submit no content, pay no subscriptions. Let them whither and die. With more and more universities joining in on open access, this should become easier and easier. However, they still legally hold the rights to what they have, and thus releasing their content…

> the content which they legally yet immorally sell

The real foul is when the government enforces immoral laws.

Re: French ISPs Ordered to Block Sci-Hub and LibGen

#252

Post by Someone1234 » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 1:08 PM UTC

enriquto wrote: post #61

Someone1234 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The French really love their language, traditional publishers continue to publish in French whereas new-tech is more often in English or other languages. So I'd argue that the French have a love-affair with traditional publishing, and traditional publishing loves draconian copyright rules. The whole thing is almost a culture war for the French people's soul by-proxy.

> The French really love their language, traditional publishers continue to publish in French whereas new-tech is more often in English or other languages. This sentence is ridiculous and has nothing to do with scihub and libgen. Most french researchers are perfectly happy using these sites, and dislike strongly the draconian schemes of scientific journal publishers (which publish texts mostly in english). Several pe…

> This sentence is ridiculous and has nothing to do with scihub and libgen.

But everything to do with the French government's attitude towards traditional publishers and why they work so closely together. This issue doesn't begin and end with research publishing, it is bigger and older than that.

Calling something "ridiculous" simply because you want a black & white answer to a larger complex cultural phenomenon is a little disappointing.

Re: French ISPs Ordered to Block Sci-Hub and LibGen

#253

Post by orbital-decay » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 1:15 PM UTC

Vaskivo wrote: post #227

vanderZwan wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those 2 libraries are the closest thing to the modern internet equivalent of the "Library of Alexandria". I hope they don't manage to burn in down. This just reminds of how in the late nineties and early 2000s we used to have torrent sites for music enthusiasts with an archive of all the different versions, editions, bootlegs, all painstakingly added and catalogued, representing tens if not hundreds of man-hours wo…

I remember a torrent site for old games. You had tremendous community efforts documenting and cataloging games. Gathering every thing from the different releases, patches, music, art, etc. It was a gaming historian's wet dream. They were even beginning to record the releases from different warez scene groups. But everything went away because, form what I gathered, someone in EA noticed you could download FIFA 96 for…

It was Underground Gamer. The quality of the collection was astonishing, many games were impossible to get or purchase anywhere else due to abandonment. And everything just disappeared overnight.

People still have all this on their drives. I'm sure the community can be revived someday.

Re: French ISPs Ordered to Block Sci-Hub and LibGen

#254

Post by rapht » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 1:17 PM UTC

As Western countries are all slowly drifting towards what amounts to government-sanctionned censorship by ISPs - especially after the adoption by the EU Parliement of the copyright directive, but it's just one more step in the general movement towards controlling who can publish what on the web -, we need more initiatives that bypass those ISPs, which are currently in the Western world the only ones capable of enforcing censorship.

I'm no expert on this and the ways of achieving it, but as a citizen I feel more and more concerned about this - in particular as my (French) government seems eager to move in the not-right direction.

Re: French ISPs Ordered to Block Sci-Hub and LibGen

#255

Post by tzfld » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 1:18 PM UTC

So, after pirate sites we will have to see pirate ISPs too.

Re: French ISPs Ordered to Block Sci-Hub and LibGen

#256

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 1:21 PM UTC

Vaskivo wrote: post #227

vanderZwan wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those 2 libraries are the closest thing to the modern internet equivalent of the "Library of Alexandria". I hope they don't manage to burn in down. This just reminds of how in the late nineties and early 2000s we used to have torrent sites for music enthusiasts with an archive of all the different versions, editions, bootlegs, all painstakingly added and catalogued, representing tens if not hundreds of man-hours wo…

I remember a torrent site for old games. You had tremendous community efforts documenting and cataloging games. Gathering every thing from the different releases, patches, music, art, etc. It was a gaming historian's wet dream. They were even beginning to record the releases from different warez scene groups. But everything went away because, form what I gathered, someone in EA noticed you could download FIFA 96 for…

[deleted]

Re: French ISPs Ordered to Block Sci-Hub and LibGen

#257

Post by throwaway0402 » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 1:25 PM UTC

larkeith wrote: post #54

How difficult would it be to host one or more IPFS nodes with the files on Sci-Hub (and a directory thereof)? My understanding is that would be infeasible to block, and quite probably cheaper to host, as oft-requested papers would get mirrored.

I look forward to seeing this kind of use case on ethereum swarm when it is ready. It has built in anonymity for the person hosting and downloading any content. It also has incentive structure to continue hosting content built in as well. Otherwise very similar to IPFS.

Re: French ISPs Ordered to Block Sci-Hub and LibGen

#258

Post by 0815test » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 1:29 PM UTC

larkeith wrote: post #54

How difficult would it be to host one or more IPFS nodes with the files on Sci-Hub (and a directory thereof)? My understanding is that would be infeasible to block, and quite probably cheaper to host, as oft-requested papers would get mirrored.

AIUI, ipfs is not "infeasible" to block - so it's nowhere close to an actual "solution". You'd also get the same sort of copyright trolling that you have with Bittorrent downloads today - the technologies are quite comparable.

Re: French ISPs Ordered to Block Sci-Hub and LibGen

#259

Post by class4behavior » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 1:34 PM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #251

arghwhat wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe what was being referred to is the legal standpoint. The paid journals are an absurdity, but there is only one right course of action: Not using them. Submit no content, pay no subscriptions. Let them whither and die. With more and more universities joining in on open access, this should become easier and easier. However, they still legally hold the rights to what they have, and thus releasing their content…

> the content which they legally yet immorally sell The real foul is when the government enforces immoral laws.

If you allow illegal activity as a form of protest—when it is not the absolutely last option—, then you negate the legitimacy of the law in general. So even if you argue your illegal action was the best possible measure to move society forward, you still have to accept the consequences for breaking the law.

In this case it is the presence of a legal device allowing to censor copyright-infringing sources which is bad; that is, censorship is not even limited to (very) serious crimes anymore. As a result the government is building the legal and physical infrastructure to manipulate communication via the internet. This will only embolden more authoritarian regimes in their pursuit to isolate and nationalize their internet infrastructure.

Re: French ISPs Ordered to Block Sci-Hub and LibGen

#260

Post by terryschiavo22 » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 1:36 PM UTC

xorand wrote: post #215

This was demanded by Elsevier and Springer, as the copy of the order shows https://torrentfreak.com/images/scihuborder.pdf . Every researcher who still is an editor of one of their journals is responsible for this. Any academic manager who supports these journals, either by buying them or by counting impact factor points, is responsible of this. People should know that all of these people who support this are paid fr…

Any chance of getting a SFW version of that link? I can't click on a torrentfreak.com link, even if it probably is benign.