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How The Chronicle is trying to malign Sci-Hub

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Re: How The Chronicle is trying to malign Sci-Hub

#111

Post by mbauman »

Rels wrote: post #108
Phenomenit wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't it $100k in total from the beginning of the project in 2011? That's how I perceived it anyways.

You both seem to be saying the same thing to me? I'm not a English native, but I'm pretty sure a decade refers to a period of 10 years.

How much it cost to operate for its first decade of life is certainly not representative of how much it'll cost for the next given how its archive and usage have grown significantly.

The grandparent implied that'd be the cost to run the site, the parent suggested it's not representative now.

Re: How The Chronicle is trying to malign Sci-Hub

#112

Post by fennecfoxen »

nicolas_t wrote: post #94
lovasoa wrote: post #15

The original article presents her in a very bright light, as a smart and brave woman who is engaged in a legal battle against large greedy corporations. And I find the photo quite cool. I think she is just overly susceptible, and maybe a little bit paranoid (which is understandable for a person with enemies as powerful as hers). This reminds me of the time when a russian entomologist named a new wasp species he disco…

I'm not sure about the entomologist issue but for this article, I feel that some of the issue might be language barrier and cultural misunderstanding. For example, she mentions this paragraph: > She said that while she gets some help, Sci-Hub remains pretty much a one-woman show (it’s “mainly me,” she said) The Chronicle of Higher Education And criticises it by saying: > So they lie to their readers that Sci-Hub run…

I recall reading about an incident where a journalist with access to North Korea was detained for a while over a phrase that said a guard "barked" orders, as the locals deemed a comparison to a dog rather unflattering.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36200530

Re: How The Chronicle is trying to malign Sci-Hub

#113

Post by ipaddr »

pessimizer wrote: post #82
tokai wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is getting a bit embarrassing. Wished she disregarded things about her person. All kind of stuff is going to be said and written about you when your a globally known person. Better, and healthier, to focus on defending the cause and not yourself.

> All kind of stuff is going to be said and written about you when your a globally known person. There are powerful people who would be happy to imprison or kill her. It's weird to call a revolutionary who is in the spotlight paranoid. A couple of administration changes and a sex or bribery scandal in some place she's never even visited could set off a series of events where she ends up like Assange or worse.

That is already in the works. Sweden has a woman who have already made false statements that she has withdrawn but they are using the rape charges to get her to the US.

Re: How The Chronicle is trying to malign Sci-Hub

#114

Post by nix23 »

pessimizer wrote: post #84
nix23 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you see a problem here? >>Blocking access to ~free knowledge because one is offended >it's largely just her Yeah and that's the problem, with all dictatorships. >It's not like this is a massively collaborative project Who then uploads the content? Her alone?

She's the one delivering that access. And if you want to define sole decisionmaking power as dictatorship, I'm the dictator of the cookies I baked yesterday, too. You're free to provide access to the papers yourself.

>I'm the dictator of the cookies I baked yesterday

Your cookies are not important for the scientific world, and she is NOT the baker of the Scientific papers, just a publisher, and since it's not her content she has even less rights to block a country from partially self made work.

Don't you see the irony in it?

>...to remove all barriers in the way of science (but don't name insects after me)

Re: How The Chronicle is trying to malign Sci-Hub

#115

Post by kleiba »

detaro wrote: post #105
kleiba wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that unethical behavior can simply be justified by some other unethical behavior, especially when personal opinions are involved. Analogies are often not very useful but consider this: there's this traffic light close to my house and even though there's usually not much traffic, the red phase is much, much longer than any other light I've ever waited at. I don't know what they were thinking but it's cra…

Okay, at this point I'm starting to regret that I upvoted your comments as bringing a good perspective into the discussion if you are just trying to bring ridiculous strawman to anyone engaging with arguments. plonk

Thanks for the upvote.

I had a feeling that the previous comment would possibly not be well received. My intention was not to make a strawman argument - that's why I added a clear caveat about the limited usefulness of analogies.

The point was perhaps a bit childish, I admit, but then again, the HN audience is very diverse with many different backgrounds. Many may be intimately familiar with academic realities, others might not and simply get triggered by the old "evil publishing corporation against freedom of information" trope.

The two examples were meant to target the latter end of the spectrum, and judging from your comment, they probably failed at what I had in mind: to allude to the fact that there a multiple parties involved here and they are coming from different perspectives and they have different interests in mind. That's where the analogies end, of course.

Sci-Hub is certainly convenient. But convenience does not justify everything.

P.S.: A potential evidence that my point about the different backgrounds of the HN crowd may have been correct is the fact that my "analogies" post is the only one that has more upvotes than downvotes.

Re: How The Chronicle is trying to malign Sci-Hub

#116

Post by berdario »

kleiba wrote: post #103
berdario wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can think of more customer-friendly ways than to make me pay for every single download of a paper. On the other hand If you're thinking of the scientists and students in your society as "customers" and not as scientists and students... You are optimizing for the wrong thing (i e. You are optimizing for the benefit to capital, not for the benefit to society)

That is a very abstract thought, one that could possibly lead to a very interesting philosophical discussion about society. In the mean time, however, we live in a market economy where publishers exist, and they are a business. Of course they are interested in customers, and yes, they would be scientists and students. Am I saying that that's the best way to organize academic publishing? No. What I'm saying is that I…

> I believe in a system where the people can critically assess and evaluate all laws and regulations and has the power to get them changed. I don't believe in a system where people can just pick the laws and regulations that suit them and choose to ignore the other ones.

Fair. For the record, I don't believe in neither of the two systems that you describe, or rather... I don't think that those descriptions are meaningful.

i.e. you describe what "people can" do... you might intend "can" to mean: "have the ultimate power to", but to me that's obviously untrue (if people had the ultimate power to change regulations for the better, gerrymandering wouldn't exist, if people had the ultimate power to ignore law and regulations, police wouldn't exist).

What you describe could be true if you mean "can" to be "are allowed to". But obviously people are never allowed to do something as a blanket rule... and thus those statements are less universal, and much less interesting (People can change laws and regulations, as long as they have the support of mass media and the establishment. People can ignore law, as long as LEA turn a blind eye to it)

What is more interesting, is defining what people -should- do.

If people can critically assess all laws and regulations, should they change them?

Unjust laws are obviously not being repealed. Is that the people relinquishing their responsibility, or are there roadblocks preventing that? Who has the power to stop them? How can we empower the people?

If people think that laws are unjust, should they ignore them?

Is that good for society? How do you protect people who are doing civil disobedience?

Re: How The Chronicle is trying to malign Sci-Hub

#118

Post by platz »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #112
nicolas_t wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about the entomologist issue but for this article, I feel that some of the issue might be language barrier and cultural misunderstanding. For example, she mentions this paragraph: > She said that while she gets some help, Sci-Hub remains pretty much a one-woman show (it’s “mainly me,” she said) The Chronicle of Higher Education And criticises it by saying: > So they lie to their readers that Sci-Hub run…

I recall reading about an incident where a journalist with access to North Korea was detained for a while over a phrase that said a guard "barked" orders, as the locals deemed a comparison to a dog rather unflattering. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36200530

Maybe the connotations that you are used to subconsciously ignoring are actually still there after all.

btw, if I find a new species of donkey, I will name it after you.

Re: How The Chronicle is trying to malign Sci-Hub

#119

Post by Jolter »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #71
worik wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are a filter. They have a reputation to uphold of publishing worth while stuff (hard to believe sometimes...)

But isn't the peer-review process the filter?

Nope. Peer review is a kind of quality filter (in theory but seldom in practice), but that does nothing to solve the question of “is this a paper worthy of publishing”. That question gets resolved by the publisher/editor of the journal long before the paper makes it to peer review.

Re: How The Chronicle is trying to malign Sci-Hub

#120

Post by qwertox »

We're kind of lucky for having so many precise SDK-, Framework- and Language documentations freely available.

Just imagine how painful it would be if you'd need some kind of subscription from some centralized companies only to find out which methods a class has and what exactly they do.

Does it feel like this to not have access to papers in the scientific community? I can't tell, because I don't read papers. All I need to know is available either freely on the web or in books.

I mean, just look at the level of detail in this PDF: https://www.espressif.com/sites/default/files/documentation/...

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