Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sci-Hub Is Now on the ‘Uncensorable Web’

nasdaq.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 414 posts

Re: Sci-Hub Is Now on the ‘Uncensorable Web’

#241

Post by anonunivgrad »

jsonne wrote: post #224
baggy_trough wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are confusing the 1st Amendment with 'free speech'. Free speech is a value that is broadly applicable to society, far larger in scope than prohibition from the government.

I have no idea why you're being downvoted because you're completely right. The petty legalism around the issue does nothing to further the conversation. The 1st amendment is about the US government censoring people. It doesn't own the concept of free speech as a whole in the same way the constitution doesn't own the idea of God given rights, or democracy, or republic, or numerous other concepts mentioned.

The petty legalism is just a technique for people to stop thinking about their flagrant hypocrisy. As if the people screaming "they're a private business, they can do what they want" have ever entertained that as a serious argument for any other issue.

Re: Sci-Hub Is Now on the ‘Uncensorable Web’

#242

Post by tim333 »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #171
tim333 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't work for me either. I'm not that impressed compared with my usual technique of going to the site's Wikipedia page to see how to access it. Works for thing's like Sci Hub, Popcorn Time and the Daily Stormer.

> Daily Stormer futurama_fry_not_sure_if.jpg This is actually an awesome tip for sci-hub though that I'll be using.

Not really a fan but it's a bit of a poster child for 'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it' discussions. I figure while that's still up there's adequate free speech on the internet.

Re: Sci-Hub Is Now on the ‘Uncensorable Web’

#243

Post by ghaff »

shripadk wrote: post #216
ghaff wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Telephone directory" is a term that pretty much no one uses for phonebook.

I'm a 90s kid. From India. Always called it Telephone Directory. We also called it Yellow Pages.

In the US, in larger cities, you'd have separate "white pages" (aka the phonebook) which lists just names and addresses and "yellow pages" which had business listings and ads. In smaller locations, they were often combined into one with both white pages and yellow pages in the same book.

Re: Sci-Hub Is Now on the ‘Uncensorable Web’

#244

Post by mywittyname »

fjabre wrote: post #198
mywittyname wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These companies are unnecessary dinosaurs from a bygone era. Elsevier is a very diverse company with a lot of product offerings that are not antiquated. People here tend to just think of them as a journal publication company, but they are much more than that. The company sells (through subsidiaries) a lot of IT products to governments and law enforcement around the world. They, as a small example, offer a service t…

Then Elsevier should be just fine when it loses this part of its business.

"That part of the business" is still a huge portfolio of product offerings in-and-around the scientific publishing space. If you cut one head of the hydra, another will just grow back in its place.

The company came to be so dominant because their strategy of vertical integration is effective and repeatable. Identify a market of valuable information; build tools to collect & collate that information; build tools for searching through the information; build tools for adding annotations or otherwise improving the value of the information; build tools to enable people to provide information directly through the platform.

They've basically repeated this pattern for science, medicine, legal, and insurance industries. So much so that it's really impossible to pry them out of a space because they get so tightly integrated that they actually become indistinguishable from the market.

I'm not favoring reed elsevier here, just pointing out that their dominance is very well established and isn't going to be easy to bring them down.

Re: Sci-Hub Is Now on the ‘Uncensorable Web’

#245

Post by Zak »

ehsankia wrote: post #210
cleansy wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For Paul Graham, cofounder of Y Combination who worked with Swartz, Huffman and Ohanian, Aaron Swartz is right to call himself a Reddit founder. > Speaking on Reddit a few years ago, Graham said: “The company behind Reddit was a merger of two startups…and in that situation the founders of both startups are considered founders of the combined company.” [1] sounds pretty clear to me.. 1: https://www.thefocus.news/tec…

This may be unfair as Aaron isn't there to give his side of the story, but the way I understand is that the YC put these 1+2 people (who were all talented) together to help build reddit, but Huffman and Ohanian were far more interested in building reddit as it was originally their project and they had been working on it for 6 months, and it seems like Aaron wasn't as interested in it. So yes, while Graham did forcing…

Early versions of reddit's wiki were more or less reskinned infogami.

As to the co-founder question, Aaron was definitely a co-founder of the merged reddit/infogami company, but he didn't contribute much after that, leading to his departure. I think that, rather than any controversy over his arrest is why Steve and Alexis didn't really consider him a co-founder.

Re: Sci-Hub Is Now on the ‘Uncensorable Web’

#246

Post by alienlid »

bergstromm466 wrote: post #142
MacsHeadroom wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His actions in the JSTOR situation were ultimately deemed lawful. But, without passing judgement one way or the other, Aaron's beliefs about free speech and information freedom which informed his activism cannot be reasonably described as moderate.

> without passing judgement > cannot be reasonably described as moderate Are you aware that you’re claiming not to pass judgement, and then do so in the very same sentence? I think it seems immoderate to you because, like many others on this website (including me), we were all on the inside of the knowledge-monopoly walled-garden that Aaron talked about, where most research isn’t accessible to you unless you join the…

This is great, thanks for writing this and citing references. Love the Manifesto that Swartz wrote

Re: Sci-Hub Is Now on the ‘Uncensorable Web’

#247

Post by cratermoon »

slightwinder wrote: post #227
blincoln wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's for the best. A phonebook is a single list compiled by one organization. DNS is more like asking a librarian for information on a subject, and the librarian handing back a reference book. The librarian may or may not know anything about the subject, but they know where to go to find the information. Just like DNS: - Which librarian you ask can result in being pointed to a different reference book. - If the libra…

> A phonebook is a single list compiled by one organization. There are mutiple phonebooks worldwide, each compiled by different organizations. There is just not one phonebook, similar to how there is not just one DNS-server.

For many years in the US there was THE phonebook published by the regional Bell Operating Company.

Re: Sci-Hub Is Now on the ‘Uncensorable Web’

#249

Post by ajkjk »

jquery wrote: post #80
marvin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're inching closer to realizing the "reductio ad absurdum" of censorship. Someone actually got censored, and took "well, if you don't like how the DNS does things, you can just make your own!" as a literal challenge. Wonder if this will eventually lead to further fragmentation. Hopefully encryption will keep it out of the lowest levels of infrastructure, I'd hate to see separate fiber lines put down to share contro…

I wonder if the author of xkcd is ever going to apologize for his comic on free speech.

It seems more correct than ever, no?

Re: Sci-Hub Is Now on the ‘Uncensorable Web’

#250

Post by troquerre »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #240

This article (really it's more of a press release from the interested parties) seems to confuse the role of DNS from the role of certificate authority, making it hard for me to understand what they're talking about. These days sometimes the same entities provide both SSL certificates and DNS, but they are different services. > Handshake is “is effectively a decentralized domain name server,” Roquerre said. Instead of…

The article has a few technical mistakes in it (I've found most publications do that when it comes to a technical subject I'm familiar with...), but in short Handshake is an alternative decentralized DNS root hosted on a blockchain. It aims to replace Certificate Authorities as the root of trust by pinning TLSA keys directly on the blockchain instead of relying on trusted parties for verfication.
Post reply on HN