51–60 of 335 posts
Not a fan of "pirated" as the descriptive word for what Sci-Hub does. I'm sure some of it fits that description. On the other hand, a fair amount of these papers are funded with taxpayer dollars, and shouldn't be hidden behind paywalls in the first place.
The chairs at the DMV are also paid with taxpayer dollars. I’d be arrested if I tried to walk out the door with one.
I don't support piracy. So I don't support Sci-hub. But I believe that publishers are bilking the public and that publicly funded research should be made freely available. The real way to fix this is to disrupt the reputational incentives academics (and deans supporting this) have to keep publishing in these journals. For some reason, I think this is an unpopular opinion on HN.
BTW, you have to thank Robert Maxwell, father of Ghislaine Maxwell and friend of Jeff Epstein for the state of affairs: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-b...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What’s your opinion on their takedown of @realDonaldTrump?
The same. If he is seditious you can get a court to issue an injunction very quickly, and if he isn't a private entity has no issue determining what a politician can say. As a German one thinks different about free speech than do most Americans. We know all too well where too much free speech leads and when in doubt let the courts decide because we love public peace. Putting a muzzle on someone is interfering with po…
If you don't agree, then you can go to court.
Eg. Otherwise Twitter would have to go to court to remove potential bots. Which would result in millions of lawsuits across countries.
That's not realistic
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His speech has not been restricted in any real way. He can call a press conference and communicate with every American within minutes.
People keep saying this, but how would that work? We've seen major broadcasting networks refuse to air his press conferences before. Aren't most big platforms with the ability to reach "every American" private companies that can do the same? This is a genuine question - I do not watch a lot of news. Is there a government owned platform that I don't know about? I just looked into CSPAN a bit and it is a private organi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
His speech has not been restricted in any real way. He can call a press conference and communicate with every American within minutes.
People keep saying this, but how would that work? We've seen major broadcasting networks refuse to air his press conferences before. Aren't most big platforms with the ability to reach "every American" private companies that can do the same? This is a genuine question - I do not watch a lot of news. Is there a government owned platform that I don't know about? I just looked into CSPAN a bit and it is a private organi…
No one in America has the latter.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
His speech has not been restricted in any real way. He can call a press conference and communicate with every American within minutes.
People keep saying this, but how would that work? We've seen major broadcasting networks refuse to air his press conferences before. Aren't most big platforms with the ability to reach "every American" private companies that can do the same? This is a genuine question - I do not watch a lot of news. Is there a government owned platform that I don't know about? I just looked into CSPAN a bit and it is a private organi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What’s your opinion on their takedown of @realDonaldTrump?
(Not the OP) I would prefer that Twitter did it in response to a court order. But courts don't seem to be able to act fast enough.
It seems that courts are now being used as some sort of universal arbiter in every disagreement instead of using them for what they are for: decide on legal disputes. Not ever disagreement is a legal dispute but treating it like that makes society brittle and dystopian.
They’re a private company, Sci-Hub has to make their own social media service
DNS providers will also take you out if there's social pressure to do so; see the recent GoDaddy action against AR15.com. Not sure how you work around that.
As for Internet connection, there was another recent action by an ISP which blocked access to Twitter. So you're not necessarily safe with your ISP either.
I think the only story I haven't heard yet is a landlord evicting its tenants for hosting objectionable content. But without any of the above services, it doesn't really matter.
All that said, it's still possible to stay accessible even if your content isn't legal. The important point is that legal but broadly unacceptable content is never safe. You can be kicked out by any provider at any layer, and getting kicked out once serves as a signal to all the other providers at that layer that they are expected to do the same.
It's kind of like living in a small town 150 years ago. The "people" of the town are the few giant service providers in the country. It doesn't really matter what the law says, if the town consensus is that you are not welcome, then they can make it very hard or impossible to live there. They don't need law enforcement on their side, they'll run you out all the same.
Twitter has no business inserting itself into a dispute between Elbakyan and Elsevier et al. Few people would have issues if Twitter shut down the Sci-Hub account after they received a valid court order, but a private monopolist cannot be trusted to be the arbiter of what is permitted speech.
It's Twitter's own servers and they can choose who can use them or not. Permitted speech on the legal scope does not matter when talking about businesses.
Sure it matters. It matters because a bunch of people want businesses to allow all legal speech on their platform.
And this group of people is growing in support, and they might eventually get enough support to force these business to do so, using legislative changes such as required these major companies to follow common carrier laws.