The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019)

#111

Post by qwerty456127 » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 11:08 AM UTC

juliendorra wrote: post #95

qwerty456127 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a well-known issue: legal channels usually are ess convenient to use. That's why it often makes sense to download and use a pirated copy of a game/movie/ebook/whatever after you buy it: you both fulfill your duty and enjoy nice UX then. In case of movies, games and software sticking with a legal channel often also means you can't get it in a language you want because a particular company has an exclusive licen…

In France the tax on storage media (Including SSD, DVD-R, smartphones themselves, SD cards, everything) is officially a way to compensate rights holders for the legal right to make private copies (usable only with close family and relatives). The idea is that the private copy exemption is lowering sales, and this tax balance these sales. Doesn’t make a lot of sense (who was buying several copies of the same vinyl or…

> In France the tax on storage media (Including SSD, DVD-R, smartphones themselves, SD cards, everything) is officially a way to compensate rights holders for the legal right to make private copies (usable only with close family and relatives).

Why are you meant to compensate anybody for your rights? Why not compensate potential robbers for outlawing robberies then? They could be more rich and happy if the law didn't acknowledge your right for physical safety and private property protection.

Re: The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019)

#112

Post by contravariant » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 11:15 AM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #75

Calloutman wrote: post #13

I have a PhD in physics. I have zero problem with anyone downloading any of my papers from scihub. My publishers paid me nothing, and also paid the academics who peer reviewed my paper nothing. If I had stayed in academia (I didn't partially because of the toxic nature of publishing) I would also have been expected to peer review other journals for free. Information should be free access information general, but publ…

> My publishers paid me nothing, and also paid the academics who peer reviewed my paper nothing. Why are these intermediaries still around? Peer review is the real value provided by a scientitic journal and the people who do that have no reason to be loyal to these companies since they don't get paid.

At this point their main purpose is providing artificial scarcity, in the hopes that this increases the quality of the papers that do get published.

Re: The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019)

#113

Post by burntoutfire » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 11:16 AM UTC

einpoklum wrote: post #108

> Sci-Hub ... an out and out copyright pirate Arrr! Shiver me timbers. > papers harvested (illegally) illegaly? Maybe, in some world states; but not in others. Also, the illegality is temporary. Think of Marijuana in the US (and many other places). A significant fraction of the population uses it. It took them a good number of decades, but they're gradually legalizing it. With scientific publications - Sci-Hub and Li…

>> in China Sci-Hub is banned

> (Jaw drops.) This is really surprising! I wonder why it's banned there.

Political science papers criticizing China?

Re: The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019)

#114

Post by jhrmnn » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 11:22 AM UTC

azangru wrote: post #35

Calloutman wrote: post #13

I have a PhD in physics. I have zero problem with anyone downloading any of my papers from scihub. My publishers paid me nothing, and also paid the academics who peer reviewed my paper nothing. If I had stayed in academia (I didn't partially because of the toxic nature of publishing) I would also have been expected to peer review other journals for free. Information should be free access information general, but publ…

> I have a PhD in physics. I have zero problem with anyone downloading any of my papers from scihub. Out of curiosity: why don't you just host your papers on your website then - or, if you do, why don't you think it's enough?

I (not OP) do, https://jan.hermann.name/publications/ (note the copyright notices, required by the journals, which pop up when you hover of the pdf link [didn't figure out a good alternative on mobile]). In rare cases, the journals don't allow this at all, in some cases they allow you to self-publish only the submitted manuscript, before any modifications based on peer review.

As for why it's not enough—because hiring committees and funding agencies almost never take unpublished (that is, in a proper journal) manuscripts into account when evaluating you and your funding proposals. This is what needs to change in the first place to break the loop.

Re: The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019)

#115

Post by dariosalvi78 » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 11:24 AM UTC

qwerty456127 wrote: post #84

maeln wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a student in engineer school in France, I had access to a lot of paper through our school subscription. I was still using Sci-Hub all the time because just copy-pasting a DOI or a paper title and getting the PDF was so much better than all the other website which had all clunky and broken login procedure, and god awful UI/UX (understanding how to download the PDF was sometimes more of a challenge than unde…

That's a well-known issue: legal channels usually are ess convenient to use. That's why it often makes sense to download and use a pirated copy of a game/movie/ebook/whatever after you buy it: you both fulfill your duty and enjoy nice UX then. In case of movies, games and software sticking with a legal channel often also means you can't get it in a language you want because a particular company has an exclusive licen…

> In case of movies, games and software sticking with a legal channel often also means you can't get it in a language you want because a particular company has an exclusive license to distribute it in your country

that is exactly what brought me back to piracy. I am not a heavy downloader, and I would welcome a legal way of accessing films paying a reasonable fee. I thought Netflix had (partially) fixed it, but I happen to live abroad and I can't access films in my native language. Not even subtitles, and sometimes not even in English. This is so stupid and frustrating, and it's entirely the fault of the film industry. Torrents here I come.

Re: The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019)

#116

Post by dariosalvi78 » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 11:28 AM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #75

Calloutman wrote: post #13

I have a PhD in physics. I have zero problem with anyone downloading any of my papers from scihub. My publishers paid me nothing, and also paid the academics who peer reviewed my paper nothing. If I had stayed in academia (I didn't partially because of the toxic nature of publishing) I would also have been expected to peer review other journals for free. Information should be free access information general, but publ…

> My publishers paid me nothing, and also paid the academics who peer reviewed my paper nothing. Why are these intermediaries still around? Peer review is the real value provided by a scientitic journal and the people who do that have no reason to be loyal to these companies since they don't get paid.

reputation. There are hundreds of publishers, but it takes time to build reputation. Unfortunately it's a chicken and egg problem, very hard to tackle, but some new publishers are slowly emerging. (Classic) scientific publishing is a giant monstrous stinking dinosaur. Everybody hates it and SciHub is doing its fair job of accelerating its death.

Re: The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019)

#117

Post by beowulfey » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 11:35 AM UTC

One way publishers could get me, a Millennial, back into their good graces is to actually put some effort into their publishing. As in, if you're not even going to publish a paper copy of this article, but still going to charge >$1000 for "open access" rights, then at least go the extra mile and start making eReader versions of them.

I would LOVE to use my kindle to read journal papers. Many books have well formatted text with figures interspersed. It would benefit the scientific community so much to be able to use them regularly.

(Note that PMC does this, and while I wish the figures were placed correctly rather than at the end, it's a great start!)

Re: The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019)

#118

Post by xorand » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 11:37 AM UTC

>Sci-Hub does not have the opportunity to sell its platform, there is no advertising, or ‘social networking’ to obtain vital user data that it can monetise; it is a pure and unashamed ‘pirate’.

Black is white and white is black. They are not pirates and they have no connection with the 'pirates' political movement AFAIK. Feel free to contradict me, I'll learn something new.

Re: The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019)

#119

Post by Zhyl » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 11:47 AM UTC

qwerty456127 wrote: post #84

maeln wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a student in engineer school in France, I had access to a lot of paper through our school subscription. I was still using Sci-Hub all the time because just copy-pasting a DOI or a paper title and getting the PDF was so much better than all the other website which had all clunky and broken login procedure, and god awful UI/UX (understanding how to download the PDF was sometimes more of a challenge than unde…

That's a well-known issue: legal channels usually are ess convenient to use. That's why it often makes sense to download and use a pirated copy of a game/movie/ebook/whatever after you buy it: you both fulfill your duty and enjoy nice UX then. In case of movies, games and software sticking with a legal channel often also means you can't get it in a language you want because a particular company has an exclusive licen…

On a related note, I haven't seen any publisher or content producer sell "licence only" i.e. I pay them for the right to be able to own/view the content. This could either be a "buy direct, acquire elsewhere" or "pirate first, pay later".

In theory this would be a major win for the content creator. 100% revenue going directly to them with no overhead for distribution, infinitely scalable (to stress: _in theory_, I am aware that this would play out differently in practice).

Re: The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019)

#120

Post by goatkarma » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 11:49 AM UTC

ovi256 wrote: post #50

goatkarma wrote: post #41

One thing that is often overlooked is method that Scihub uses to obtain articles, and the impact that method has on the very researchers who use it. Phishing scams are used to obtain the credentials of university accounts which are then used via a proxy on Scihub to obtain the requested article (it's quite clever..they seem to often silently proxy institution's Ezproxy with the phished credentials) . The same credent…

Do you have any evidence for this ? Because otherwise it's just a piece of FUD to poison public perception of scihub. Especially the gratuitously cruel "credentials given to Scihub are often not just used by Scihub, and are then used for further phishing or hacking by other third parties".

Sorry I didn't respond earlier, think account was rate limited due to being new.

Not sure what sort of proof you want? "Gratuitously cruel" is quite an emotive description! The simplest example is the same phished accounts used by Scihub were also used to send more phishing emails to university and non-university email addresses.

Hopefully you'll see below from my other responses, I'm not here to turn people against SH (I admire it and what they did technically with creating their own proxy on too of other University proxies is really clever stuff!), but the access to articles need to come from somewhere, and I'm just pointing out my experience from working at a university (who I'm sure is sick of paying millions PA for resource access!).