Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience • Hacker News Board

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#141

Post by dr_zoidberg » Fri, Feb 26, 2016, 4:58 PM UTC

fao_ wrote: post #137

dr_zoidberg wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimers: I live in another country, and I research in digital forensics -- that has quite an open community. In my situation, I've never reached anywhere near that point. All my works are available for donwload as PDFs, and even if they weren't, my research group keeps a repository where we can re-download/point/email anyone who asks for them. We haven't published in IEEE journals (yet), but as of our countrys la…

As far as I can tell, it comes down to two things: a) Authors need to be published in certain journals to have their work read by their peers, and gain credibility. b) Academic journals (Elsevier, etc.) require you to hand over the rights to the paper to them.

a) Luckily in my field, most prestige comes from the DFRWS[0], which is open. And working on/with certain tools, most of which are also FLOSS.

b) As I understand, in my country it's impossible for an author to loose rights over his own work. However, I'm not a lawyer and can't give more specific details.

[0] http://www.dfrws.org/

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#142

Post by Barrin92 » Fri, Feb 26, 2016, 6:06 PM UTC

jessriedel wrote: post #130

return0 wrote: post #17

I've said in a previous comment, sci-hub is pure civil disobedience of the noble kind. In fact i thought it would be impossible to ever sue her, because there is no moral argument that can outweigh what she offers. I use sci-hub all the time because my institution doesn't have access to all the sci journals, and i want access to ALL the knowledge for which millions of taxpayers have paid for (but they don't know wher…

According to MLK, civil disobedience is only just when you accept the penalties prescribed by law.

Admittedly MLK probably didn't foresee that people could go to prison for downloading information from the internet.

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#143

Post by donmaq » Fri, Feb 26, 2016, 6:48 PM UTC

return0 wrote: post #36

bcook wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, any knowledge that could save a life should be freely available? I like the idea, but I think the situation is not that simple. Although you make a good point that piracy of one thing may be dissimilar to piracy of another thing, both acts are still considered piracy. That is why I asked a question about generic piracy.

> So, any knowledge that could save a life should be freely available? its not free. taxpayers have paid for it (and are not getting it for aforementioned reasons)

It may be worth delineating "how much" taxpayers have paid for it. For example, many H-wood productions leverage huge tax benefits in their budgets, to the extent of pitting states against each other for better discounts or outright 'grants'.

So arguably to some measure, taxpayers pay for H-wood productions too... (or for that matter, the products of any corporation which leverages tax giveaways, trade tariffs, or any other government - provided handout). Government $ is taxpayer $.

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#144

Post by acveilleux » Fri, Feb 26, 2016, 6:58 PM UTC

jononor wrote: post #104

acveilleux wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the resource being abused by sci-hub (a university's ezproxy server, via a hacked or shared user account) is shut down by publisher locking out a whole university because an account downloaded 10000 papers over a week-end, there is a real loss. It is not a theoretical moral quandary. Obviously, the loss is kind of abstract for the publisher but it isn't for the small college that spends half or more of its annua…

Why ruined? Can't they just use sci-hub to do their research? ;)

That doesn't help the poor librarian that will now spend 3 days going back and forth with the platform while the front desk has to explain to the various users why they cannot get their articles from Journals for which the library already has a subscription.

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#145

Post by return0 » Fri, Feb 26, 2016, 7:29 PM UTC

dalke wrote: post #60

return0 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, any knowledge that could save a life should be freely available? its not free. taxpayers have paid for it (and are not getting it for aforementioned reasons)

Some papers were written by self-employed people or by corporate employees. Is it okay for these papers to be restricted?

Did elsevier/springer pay for the research? if no then the answer is no they shouldn't be restricted.

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#146

Post by notalaser » Fri, Feb 26, 2016, 7:38 PM UTC

dr_zoidberg wrote: post #136

notalaser wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latter is a point that's often forgotten, and is very true. I used to do research a long time ago, prior to deciding I'm not quite academia material. If I ever get nostalgic, I literally have to pay between 30 USD and 100 USD just to get PDFs of articles that I wrote. Of course, this is upsetting only on a personal level, but the entire process is extremely toxic to learning.

Disclaimers: I live in another country, and I research in digital forensics -- that has quite an open community. In my situation, I've never reached anywhere near that point. All my works are available for donwload as PDFs, and even if they weren't, my research group keeps a repository where we can re-download/point/email anyone who asks for them. We haven't published in IEEE journals (yet), but as of our countrys la…

Mine was in electromagnetism. Far less open. I don't live in the US, either, so perhaps the legal situation here would allow me some recourse. I just didn't care enough to investigate, academia is something I've long put behind me :-).

As for your questions:

1. There are publishers which require you to relinquish all your rights to distribution, copying etc.. In other words, they basically own every right to the final work. This is usually circumvented by just distributing the latest draft for free. IIRC, one of our papers was published in such a journal. We did receive a copy of the journal, which I obviously don't have, it's in our lab's library.

2. For the others, there's no way for me to say "oh, hi, I'm this paper's author, can I please have a copy?", and in at least one case, we didn't receive a copy of the journal it was published in. Some publishers are nice and give you a pre-print PDF of the article, so that you can actually substantiate your claim that you published it if your institution requires more detailed bookkeeping. But many skip straight to giving you the middle finger and telling you how you can buy the journal if you want it.

I'm hesitant to give publishers' names because this was long enough ago that a) my memory is a little foggy and b) things I say may no longer apply.

So basically, at this point, neither me, nor my former colleagues have physical copies of the journals themselves. I didn't care enough to save the PDFs (nor am I likely to care soon -- that's why I only find it funny in a moderately annoying way), and my former colleagues aren't allowed to send me the final articles in PDF format, either, at least under the paper equivalent of EULA.

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#147

Post by dalke » Fri, Feb 26, 2016, 9:28 PM UTC

return0 wrote: post #145

dalke wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some papers were written by self-employed people or by corporate employees. Is it okay for these papers to be restricted?

Did elsevier/springer pay for the research? if no then the answer is no they shouldn't be restricted.

Why not?

If I fund my own research, and ask Springer to publish it for me, then why are we forced to make it unrestricted?

Does this rule only apply to journal articles, or does it also apply to books on a research topic?

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#148

Post by conceit » Sat, Feb 27, 2016, 1:00 AM UTC

msvan wrote: post #5

Civil disobedience is an important form of democracy. Maybe in the future, when all of our calls, messages and identities are monitored in full by our benevolent overlords, we won't be able to practice it anymore. Right or wrong, faraway anti-Western countries have served as counterweights against the West for Snowden, Assange and Elbakyan.

I don't think it's a form of democracy any more than are breathing or rigged voting. Peace treaties aren't a form of war either.

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#149

Post by conceit » Sat, Feb 27, 2016, 1:15 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #27

khedoros wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the clarification. It's true; if any message can be silenced and any thought wiped out at will before it's even developed, then its hard for even the realization that you're being controlled to spread, let alone any plan to fight against the control.

Cory Doctorow makes that case all the time. You don't want perfect enforcement because it provides no opportunity to evaluate when the law is wrong. You need somebody to be able to break the law, show what happens and prove that the world doesn't end in order to make the case that the consequences are actually quite alright and we shouldn't have that law anymore.

Separation of power ideally means that enforcement and evaluation of the law are separate instances.

It doesn't work in practice. Indeed, having more laws to help enforce basic laws would seem absurd, if the practice of lawgiving was in principle wrong. But lessening law would seem absurd, if avoiding lawlessness was the idea in the first place.

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#150

Post by sflicht » Sat, Feb 27, 2016, 2:16 AM UTC

notalaser wrote: post #146

dr_zoidberg wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimers: I live in another country, and I research in digital forensics -- that has quite an open community. In my situation, I've never reached anywhere near that point. All my works are available for donwload as PDFs, and even if they weren't, my research group keeps a repository where we can re-download/point/email anyone who asks for them. We haven't published in IEEE journals (yet), but as of our countrys la…

Mine was in electromagnetism. Far less open. I don't live in the US, either, so perhaps the legal situation here would allow me some recourse. I just didn't care enough to investigate, academia is something I've long put behind me :-). As for your questions: 1. There are publishers which require you to relinquish all your rights to distribution, copying etc.. In other words, they basically own every right to the fina…

Genuinely asking (not snark, and I am not a physicist): what does it mean to conduct research in "electromagnetism" more than a century after Maxwell? Did you study superconductivity? Electrical power beaming? Magnetic properties of weird alloys?

I ask only because I thought people who study these things are more likely to say they research "electrical engineering" (if they want to be general and applied), or "condensed matter physics" or maybe "materials science".

I'm really just curious about the relevant terminology / sociology of academia.