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Re: Sci-Net

#41

Post by volemo »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #36
setgree wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there was every a ready-made use case for crypto, it's this. Alexandra Elbakyan is both a criminal in most places and a hero to many [0]. I want her to keep doing what she's doing, and that means someone probably has to pay her to do it. The whole point of Bitcoin is to make money permisionless, i.e. the right tool for this particular job. [0] https://www.science.org/content/article/frustrated-science-s...

Send her money in an envelope if you want to pay her.

That would be actually illegal [1] while investing in her memecoin is only grey area.

[1]: Since, afaik, she lives in Russia and sending money in an envelope is made illegal by ФЗ № 176-ФЗ art. 22 p. "г".

Re: Sci-Net

#43

Post by volemo »

Medicineguy wrote: post #10
mdrzn wrote: post #8

"On Sci-Net, you're using tokens directly to reward uploaders. Payments go to fellow researchers, not to the platform." I understood that payments go to fellow uploaders, which could be random university students that just do this to "earn" tokens. So the money is still not flowing to researchers. Have I misunderstood?

I think you right. But researchers can upload their own papers. Seem to require a paying requester and the researcher has to notice the request.

While I agree this is phrased in somewhat misleading way, I think by "fellow researchers" they ment "researchers like you, user, who believe and participate in liberation of science", not "the researchers, who authored the paper you're trying to pirate".

Re: Sci-Net

#44

Post by bibelo »

Probiotic6081 wrote: post #13

Almost unrelated, but this is one of the domains that just show up as "Server Not Found" by default to users in Germany. It's getting blocked by ISPs on the domain level after a "voluntary agreement" with copyright holders: https://torrentfreak.com/publisher-reinforces-paywall-with-s...

same in France it seems

Re: Sci-Net

#45

Post by StableAlkyne »

cge wrote: post #18
A_Duck wrote: post #2

Why must crypto infect everything good? Is the incentive even necessary? It would be worth testing if there are enough scientists who are keen to promote information sharing in their field without some minimal reward I also wonder if this will make the penalties for uploaders more severe since it becomes a commercial act

>I also wonder if this will make the penalties for uploaders more severe since it becomes a commercial act It's not clear whether this is even using a privacy-oriented cryptocurrency arrangement (assuming that would actually be private). What this appears to be presenting is a system where users will be pay, and be paid, to violate copyright, in a way that may well be easily traceable and linkable to real identities,…

> publishers can't pursue those violations too severely

A decade ago the publishing system harassed a researcher because he was downloading too many papers, going after him for millions in copyright "damages," only stopping proceedings after he ended his own life.

* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz

Re: Sci-Net

#46

Post by echelon »

axus wrote: post #39
tokai wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Since 2011, she has been living in Russia.[10][11][12][13]

Yeah, hard to dispute an auto-biography! Not actually a PDF but guess she didn't want to break the link: https://sci-hub.st/alexandra/bio.pdf

> she didn't want to break the link

That's what redirects are for!

Re: Sci-Net

#47

Post by antognini »

Luc wrote: post #29
spiderfarmer wrote: post #11

Are there any successful crypto adjacent projects that do well outside the crypto-sphere? As soon as I notice the word crypto, I think the project will go the way of the dodo. But maybe I'm biased.

Numerai? Though I'm not so sure - their coin seems to have lost a lot of dollar value since I last checked. https://numer.ai/

Even so, the AUM of the underlying hedge fund has been going up. They've stopped publishing the fund's performance, though, so it's a little unclear if the increase is due to good performance or if they've just attracted more investors.

Re: Sci-Net

#48

Post by skywalqer »

perihelions wrote: post #20

Hold up, doesn't this turn SciHub into a vehicle for transferring currency to its Russian ownership, and therefore to the Russian state? Is that not a feature of this cryptocoin? Obligatory "I love SciHub and what it's accomplished for millions of people". But whatever Elbakyan's person character, she is still a citizen of a country that's at war. edit: I'm not accusing Elbakyan's character or ideals in any way. Mode…

Wikipedia:

> Elbakyan was in conflict with the liberal, pro-Western wing of the Russian scientific community.[8] According to her interview, she was attacked on the Internet by 'science popularizers' who supported liberal views that led to the shutdown of Sci-Hub in Russia in 2017 for a few days.[59] In particular, Elbakyan was strongly critical of the former Dynasty Foundation (shut down in 2015) and its associated figures. She believes that the foundation was politicized, tied to Russia's liberal opposition, and fit the legal definition of a "foreign agent".

> She has also done work on religion,[57] and has argued that Stalin was a god of science, and an incarnation both of the god Thoth and the Christian God.[58]

Idk but this sounds so sus that I don't believe her with anything. Arguing that Stalin was good is very similar to arguing that Hitler was.

Re: Sci-Net

#49

Post by RankingMember »

> The only downside is that obtaining Sci-Hub tokens on the Solana network can be a non-trivial puzzle for a user who are new to crypto. But that only makes the process more interesting.

Nah, that will ensure a huge swath of users can't/won't access, as they don't have the time/inclination to figure out the crypto aspect. Some will rebut this with "but they're getting it for free!", but a huge part of the value proposition of sci-hub.se is the ease of use- even people with legitimate access to an article used sci-hub because it's simply a smoother interface. This kills that.

Re: Sci-Net

#50

Post by cge »

StableAlkyne wrote: post #45
cge wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I also wonder if this will make the penalties for uploaders more severe since it becomes a commercial act It's not clear whether this is even using a privacy-oriented cryptocurrency arrangement (assuming that would actually be private). What this appears to be presenting is a system where users will be pay, and be paid, to violate copyright, in a way that may well be easily traceable and linkable to real identities,…

> publishers can't pursue those violations too severely A decade ago the publishing system harassed a researcher because he was downloading too many papers, going after him for millions in copyright "damages," only stopping proceedings after he ended his own life. * https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz

Yes, and we still talk about him and that one case today, a decade later. It was also a case where circumstances around it (the 'breaking' into an unlocked cabinet, the 'hidden' laptop, the different university, the manifesto, and so on) all allowed the case to be presented as particularly bad by publishers and the government.

And that's the risk here, in part: this system allows the practice to be presented as a paid criminal enterprise, and allows individual users to be presented as criminal participants.

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