I chceked their counterfeit policy[1] to confirm; it's pretty clear and hews to the plain meaning of the word:
> Counterfeit goods are goods, including digital goods, that are promoted, sold, or otherwise distributed using a trademark or brand that is identical to, or substantially indistinguishable from, the registered trademark or brand of another, without authorization from the trademark or brand owner. Counterfeit goods attempt to deceive consumers into believing the counterfeit is a genuine product of the brand owner, or to represent themselves as faux, replicas or imitations of the genuine product.
An unauthorized copy simply isn't counterfeit unless it is promoted as official. There's a legit copyright argument, but Twitter's rules (correctly) don't apply unless the copyrighted material is on Twitter.
> Anyhow, another case of Twitter capriciously moderating content and quelling free speech. The worst part though is that Twitter HQ sets the policy to whatever suits their fancy.
The suppression of speech is the symptom here, not the root problem. I doubt Twitter is doing this because they have an axe to grind against SciHub. Likely, an executive got a call from the journals and then told the moderation teams to figure out how to ban them.
I think the root issue is that tech/media companies are becoming a bit of a shadow-government where people with influence can shut down their competitors. And the journals probably feel they were entirely justified in "lobbying" Twitter, since SciHub is violating their copyright.
This isn't new, businesses have always made private agreements to screw each other, and the only reason we don't have smoke-filled back rooms these day is people don't smoke much. What's new is that big information / infrastructure / financial platforms are a far more influential feature of the modern political economy.
[1]: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/counterfeit-g...