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.
Sci-Net
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Re: Sci-Net
#12Why 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
Tbh, I like it!
Yes, crypto has a bad taste. But from my pov, the research paper situation is so broken, that anything that improves upon the status quo is highly welcomed.
But I'm with you with the penalties. Maybe they can add an option to forfeit the tokens to sci-net instead.
Re: Sci-Net
#13Almost 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...
Re: Sci-Net
#14Re: Sci-Net
#15Why 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
> Is the incentive even necessary?
I don't know how “necessary” it is, but I strong doubt that it will be helpful at all, as the monetary incentive is a great way to attract malicious behavior (like spamming with AI-generated papers to farm rewards, or whatever works, really).
Re: Sci-Net
#16Are 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.
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Re: Sci-Net
#17"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?
the point is not to pay researchers (lol), but to encourage uploaders with karma points, while paying for sci-hub infrastructure...
Re: Sci-Net
#18Why 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, and, for US users, likely even needs to be reported on tax returns even when just paying. The 'cup of coffee' statement entirely misses the point: the nature of the process changes when payments are involved.
Added to that are statements saying that they have systems to remove watermarks and protect the identity of users. If they're envisioning this being something researchers and students contribute to, that watermark removal system is likely to fail on many occasions, and people are potentially going to get themselves severely hurt.
I often feel like academic publishing and paper availability is somewhat of a cold war between researchers and publishers, where researchers practically need to violate copyright to research effectively, while publishers can't pursue those violations too severely, or they risk researchers ostracizing them, so we end up with unspoken understandings of acceptable violations. But a system like goes entirely outside of acceptable boundaries.
If a publisher came to a university and said, hey, this researcher put up the final copy of their own paper on their personal website in violation of copyright, the university might tell the researcher to replace the copy with a manuscript one. If a publisher comes to a university (or the police) and says they can show concrete evidence that one of their students is being paid through a foreign criminal organization to knowingly violate the terms of the university's subscriptions and likely criminally violate copyright, it seems like it could have a very different outcome.
Re: Sci-Net
#19Why even use sci-hub anymore? With the lack of updates, instability over petty stuff like naming a wasp after the founder, etc. I don't see why anyone would use sci-hub over Anna's Archive.
You should have started, not ended, your post with "Anna's Archive" ;D I did not know of it, which is why I used scihub.
Re: Sci-Net
#20Hold 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. Modern Russia is a state that functions like a mafia, that shakes down and extorts anyone with a whiff of money on them. Elbakyan lives in Russia—is subject to immense criminal pressure. It's a neutral observation that any windfall profits from a major coin-minting end up not funding servers, but funding the Russian army. Only a naïf could dispute that.