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

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

#271

Post by billfruit » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:01 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…

Perhaps it was "Home of the Underdogs", http://homeoftheunderdogs.net

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

#272

Post by class4behavior » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:03 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #266

class4behavior wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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;…

The best way to get a law changed is for everyone to be breaking it all of the time. Laws only works because everyone follows it most of the time. If everyone is breaking a law, the government can't punish everyone, and eventually people start to wonder why it is a law in the first place. We've seen this happen with other laws in the past, quite often. Pot legalization comes to mind.

Everyone is the magic word here. Reality isn't that trivial unfortunately and we aren't talking about instances where this approach worked, but whether this kind of approach is justifiable as a general procedure. While pot legalization is going well, there's also an opioid crisis. Does that mean we should further deregulate the opioid industry?

Beside, the majority isn't necessarily in the right either. That's why no matter what you and society need to process the fact that you have broken the law; note that I'm using the abstract term process, which

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

#273

Post by Simon_says » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:03 PM UTC

dTal wrote: post #238

yipbub wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you give me an example?

Sure. Mooi were formed in 1999, split in 2006, made a bunch of great music in between, and all that remains is this one song on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF5cP8S0zOk The masters still exist, I'm told, but that's no good to anyone - they won't be re-released because it would require too much intellectual property wrangling and nobody cares enough to bother, and sooner or later that hard drive will die a…

That's great song. Thanks for getting me interested in a band I can't torrent.

Edit: Wait. Am I part of the problem?

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

#274

Post by megous » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:05 PM UTC

class4behavior wrote: post #259

leereeves wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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;…

> 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.

There are old law on the books that no one in their right mind follows today. It's probably one of the ways a law gets repealed eventually - people stop obeying, state stops enforcing, and then perhaps a repeal happens. I don't think this is anything against the legitimacy of law system in general. It's just that it has many ways of working.

Though in this case it's more nuanced, as this is not against the copyright in general, just specific uses.

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

#275

Post by Kiro » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:07 PM UTC

terryschiavo22 wrote: post #260

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.

What do you mean? TorrentFreak is a news site.

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

#276

Post by djsumdog » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:08 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…

> However, they still legally hold the rights to what they have, and thus releasing their content in public is still illegal. You'd have to get the original authors to legally release it elsewhere, which they might not even have the rights to.

Most scientists still hold the rights to their articles. You can often e-mail a professor if you need additional information, artifacts or code for reproducibility. Yes, it's hard to get professors to e-mail you back a lot of the times, but when they do, they are often open to giving you copied of their papers and underlying research data. Most journals don't put any restrictions on them for doing so.

In one of my publications, I had to pay an additional $150 just for that article to be open access (and that was over a decade ago. I'm sure it's gone up).

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

#277

Post by billfruit » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:08 PM UTC

codedokode wrote: post #195

larkeith wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, large corporations (i.e. Elsevier) profiting from others' creation of intellectual property seems very inline with China's model in certain sectors... Though I would agree that the comparison is weak. While I'm always against censorship in all its forms, relating it to China seems... stretched.

In the West, the surveillance is usually done by the private corporations instead of the government. Like Google, Facebook etc. For the end user there is no big difference.

I think NSA is major agent in surveillance. I am frankly more wary about governments and shady national security agencies doing surveillance on citizens than private companies doing it for commercial gains.

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

#278

Post by jessriedel » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:09 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #104

Vinnl wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if they'd also block, say, Wikipedia for linking to working IP addresses, or sites like https://whereisscihub.now.sh/go that automatically redirect you to them.

In Germany, linking to illegal content is also illegal (IANAL), so they could sue Wikipedia or whereisscihub.now.

Does the link have to be directly to the illegal content, or just to a domain that supplies illegal content somewhere on the domain? The SciHub homepage is not itself illegal content.

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

#279

Post by MereInterest » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:09 PM UTC

yipbub wrote: post #194

dTal wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like hundreds of man-years, when you factor in all the editions, bootlegs etc that are now forever lost to time. This should be a golden age for information preservation. Instead it's a dark age. I personally know several eye-wateringly good bands whose catalogs are not available anywhere, at all.

Could you give me an example?

As a non-music example (and please somebody prove me wrong), I cannot find the 1954 movie "So This is Paris", starring Tony Curtis. No copies available anywhere on amazon, ebay, or searching through internet sites. There was a short clip of one of the songs on Youtube a few years ago, but it was taken down for copyright infringement. I simply cannot find it anywhere.

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

#280

Post by mrkstu » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:10 PM UTC

class4behavior wrote: post #259

leereeves wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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;…

Agreed. I've thought of this as the 24/Jack Bauer line of thought. Torture is illegal and should be- but if you've tried everything else and you're running out of time before the nuke hidden in Los Angeles goes off- break the law and torture the terrorist.

Then- go to the cops after saving the city\failing to save the city and turn yourself in. Accept the consequence for breaking the law. Civil disobedience embraces this- civil rights activists fighting Jim Crow laws were more than happy to get arrested to highlight the injustice/immorality of the law.

Calling pirating content civil disobedience though is disingenuous in my opinion, especially if you have the means to access it the proper way and are using it to access your career. If you want to 'protest' then download it and then send an email to the FBI that you did so and then publicize it.