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.
Unfortunately the minor ISPs are almost 3-fold slower in most places, while being just as expensive. My options are between Virgin, which has speeds of up to 362mB fibre for £42/month, and the next best BT, which is 67mB for £39.99/ month. At uni, unless I wanted 30mB for a 7 person household, my only option was again Virgin. It's difficult not to be on a major ISP when the minor ISPs can't contest on speed and value…
To be annoying - milli Bels of speed? I've never seen anyone write it like this before, it's MB for megabytes, and Mb for megabits, mB is a different unit altogether.
Should be Mb. Project deadlines mean sleep deprived Hacker News procrastination comments.
> 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;…
A law has no inherent legitimacy simply from being a law. It must either reflect a social more or uphold public safety or, at the very least, be useful as a rule.
Should people be paid for the work they do? Yes. Should people be paid for the work of others? Maybe, if they contributed in some way. Should we pay an academic journal which charges fees for people to submit to them? No, that's absurd.
Is responsible for what? I support efforts to use open-access journals whenever possible and putting these ungodly abominations out of business. But that's up to researchers and funding agencies, not up to "the Pirate Bay of science" or any other site that breaks the law. And while I don't think it's immoral or anything to use it, I do think it's somewhat shrill and disingenuous to act like its blockage is some kind…
While this area isn't my expertise. My understanding is that a large percentage of papers published have some Government funding. I would really like to see research which is conducted with the public's money required to be entered into the public domain and currently that doesn't seem to be the case.
> 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."
I don't think that's true if the laws in question are the result of corruption. Rich companies have been paying politicians for some time to keep copyright and patent laws strong in a way that suits their interests instead of the voters'. Resisting laws that came from bribery should be considered a standard part of democracy. Probably even celebrated as virtuous.
Looking at the topic here, I'd say Alexandra is doing something virtuous given corruption and incompetent administrators led to a system where all that research was concentrated in hands of tiny number of greedy players that did about nothing in return.
Unfortunately the minor ISPs are almost 3-fold slower in most places, while being just as expensive. My options are between Virgin, which has speeds of up to 362mB fibre for £42/month, and the next best BT, which is 67mB for £39.99/ month. At uni, unless I wanted 30mB for a 7 person household, my only option was again Virgin. It's difficult not to be on a major ISP when the minor ISPs can't contest on speed and value…
I spent years with 5 people on 12mbit ADSL2. I'd rather have that than virgin and blocking any day. I suffered Virgin for a couple of years and it was hell. Now I'm on ~64mbit VDSL with no blocking at all on Zen. We pull 500G+ a month through it. Costs £37.49 a month. They just rolled out 300mbit fibre as well so that's going in next month. Speed isn't everything for me. I can QoS those problems away pretty well.
We switched service providers 3 times during that year. We started with a 30mbit connection through PlusNet, then 60 with EE, then 300 Virgin. The only one that was usable was Virgin Media. I wish that wasn't that case, but it simply was. Internet was a contentious topic in our house, but having 7 people either playing games, watching HD movies, or streaming simultaneously knocked most ISPs down swiftly.
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 legiti…
You're adding enforcement into the picture. Nonetheless, it is intended for law enforcement or the courts to judge whether to suspend the former. But to what point the two have that privilege depends on the specifics of the legal system. Meaning, unrepealed, weird old laws the US is known for could not necessarily stay unenforced in other countries.
Yeah, everyone is so defiant that they don't realize that IP and VPN blocks are coming if we continue down this road.
This is what Merkel meant with "Neuland"(engl. uncharted territory) in 2013. In Germany she is heavily mocked for not understanding the Internet. Of course, it's the bright populace of high class forums such as Facebook and r/de who know better than the Physicist Chancellor of a G7 nation... In reality, she meant it is legal Neuland. That authorities and courts had little established ways of enforcing laws online, th…
Thing is, it's the fact that is a legal "Neuland" that it's a great place.
What if you use your phone line to organize a crime? Is that a problem? Should we add word recognition to phone line to make sure this doesn't happen? Should we limit it to a series of specific words?
This would break phone usage.
The same apply to internet, except that it can do even more. The only ways to make sure theses criminal activities doesn't happen would be to limit how it can be used which break everything.