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Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

gen.lib.rus.ec

251–260 of 265 posts

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#251

For those of you who use SciHub: do you take any special precautions against malware? PDFs are a convenient vector for viruses, trojans, etc. And the users downloading these papers tend to work for academic/research institutions that could be ripe targets for hacking & IP theft.

Because I'm mostly using this from school, I'm usually in a disposable VM behind a proxy. Those are the precautions I personally take.

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#252
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simultaneous arguments (that get repeated often) of "journals provide little to no value and therefore publications should be free" and "researchers value the curation of top journals because (seemingly) only high quality papers get accepted" are quite at odds with each other I think. >where Elsevier et al receive publicly-funded knowledge, yet privately control the supply. But they are given the 'knowledge'. Sur…

> "journals provide little to no value[...]" and "researchers value the curation[...]" are quite at odds with each other I think They aren't because the journal corporations don't provide the curation, they provide the brand name that attracts heavy-hitting papers. The curation is provided by academics for free. The brand name ("impact factor" of historic papers in that journals) is the one thing that prevents migrat…

At the end of the day, researchers need some way to decide which papers they should read and which they shouldn't. There are too many papers coming out for anyone to read them all. The fact that prestigious journals have a vested interest in not printing crap papers is a helpful filter when deciding what to read.

I still think there should be some reform in this area but the journals do provide some value at the moment.

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#253
post #24

Does anyone have a complete copy? The seeds are very slow. I know someone willing to pay for this data. Shoot me an email.

Since this is technically very illegal I'd be inclined to view your message as a bait to capture and jail one of the very first people who managed to mirror the whole thing.

No offense, just seems fishy.

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#254

Sucks you can’t index torrents?

Download them and index them locally?

I believe it's a good time for the publishing of a high-quality article detailing on how to build such mirroring servers with minimal budget.

Usually such machines don't need best CPUs around but they definitely do need ECC memory and serious NAS-like capabilities. So maybe older-gen Xeons? I am no expert though. Hopefully somebody publishes a blog post about it.

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#255
post #220
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, those means are there (most of the time), but if researchers want a career in academia, most of the time there's no other option than submitting their work to "high impact" journals. I don't think sacrificing their already slim career choices is a reasonable sacrifice to ask when speaking of voluntarism.

>I don't think sacrificing their already slim career choices is a reasonable sacrifice to ask when speaking of voluntarism. Right, but I don't see how breaking copyright law is a solution to fixing the problem either. The journals are just going to jack up the rates to cover their "losses". Is there really no other way?

I am not very sure they can afford to jack up their rates. News in academia spreads really quickly and most researchers can't really afford to pay subs from their pockets.

I know several researchers who are tragic with anything computer-related. Even they picked up SciHub mere days after it made the news for the first time.

IMO jacking up prices in such a climate can succeed but is very risky.

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really an excuse - it truly is convenient in such a way that you only have to go to one place to get the thing you want. If I want Man in the High Castle, I have to pay for Amazon. But if I want Ozark, I need to pay for Netflix. If I want to watch Metropolis, or The Raven, or The Maltese Falcon, they're old and not any streaming service, even if the rights are owned by a studio. Where can I find them? Yup, b…

The selection of movies on Netflix is beyond dismal. If it's not from the last 15 years, your chances of finding it are virtually nil. If it is from the last 15 years, your chances are merely terrible. The demise of video stores has left me with no idea how I'd (legally) watch an old movie short of purchasing the DVD. Strange that widespread access to classic movies only lasted about 20 years -- from the mid '80s to…

There are a number of alternative streaming services with a better selection. One that comes to mind is Filmstruck, which has the entire Criteron Collection but there was another successful one I can't remember the name of.

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Copyright law is extraordinarily restrictive, and you, me, and everybody you know is guilty of violation after violation... That's a pretty extreme claim. Can you give an example of how the average non-bittorrent-using person regularly violates copyright law?

I bet that almost everyone has already copied a friend's drive full of (pirated, old, crappy divx) movies. And doesn't check the copyright for music/pictures they include in material they produce and share (blog, social media, report, art). Academics (even ones not caring about copyright) usually put a lot of their papers on their website even if they handed exclusive rights to some publisher. A lot of amateurs using…

Playing a song for a crowd without the rights is illegal, hence why no major DJ software has a spotify integration

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In over twenty years of piracy, I’ve never actually met someone online who got something more than a pissy email from an ISP. It’s possible to be made an example of, but if you’re not profiting from the piracy it’s vanishingly unlikely. The only people I know of who got more than a token fine were involved in some other criminal enterprise besides just downloading something.

I can tell that you’re not from Germany or know anyone from here that pirates. There are special law firms (Waldorf Frommer comes to mind) specializing only on sending out cease and desist letters carrying fines of around 1.000€ per infringement (mostly movies and tv shows). ISP’s willingly hand over any customer data to those firms. Of course the only one benefiting from this is the law firms not the copyright holde…

I lived in Germany for a period and was amazed by this as well. It's hard to reconcile with the fact that they are one of the most privacy-centric countries there is as far as technology goes

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#259
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tapes are only good for offline storage. If you want online storage, you'll need one drive per tape, and you would get huge lookup times.

> Tapes are only good for offline storage. > If you want online storage, you'll need one drive per tape, No, tape libraries exist, and would be considered 'nearline' storage. https://www.ibm.com/it-infrastructure/storage/tape/library > and you would get huge lookup times Yes. This is not a good system for random access.

Indeed. But the initial investment is very expensive.

Re: Sci Hub repository torrents of scientific papers

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the same excuse that’s trotted out in every field with a piracy problem—up until someone finds a way to do it and it turns out it wasn’t an insurmountable problem after all. That’s how we got iTunes, Spotify, Steam, Netflix, and so on.

It's not really an excuse - it truly is convenient in such a way that you only have to go to one place to get the thing you want. If I want Man in the High Castle, I have to pay for Amazon. But if I want Ozark, I need to pay for Netflix. If I want to watch Metropolis, or The Raven, or The Maltese Falcon, they're old and not any streaming service, even if the rights are owned by a studio. Where can I find them? Yup, b…

The working definition of "excuse" is "a reason I don't agree with".
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