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Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?

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Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?

#301

Post by chrisseaton »

enriquto wrote: post #31

This is extremely infuriating. Alexandra Elbakyan has done a huge positive contribution to human civilization, even knowing that it was putting herself at personal risk. She's just 32 years old. How can we help her? Does she need money, public support, vpns in every country? Whatever she needs, mankind is indebted to her and we should help if we can. Anybody who has ever supported their research using Sci-Hub (or Lib…

> She's just 32 years old.

Weird thing to say - like you think 32 is a child or something? That’s someone well into their second decade of adulthood.

Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?

#302

Post by ajb »

ajb wrote: post #30

Given how beneficial sci-hub is, there ought to be some way that the scientific community can formally recognise this, as a way of legitimizing her cause. Some ways I can think of: * Get her elected as rector of a university. Contraversial figures are sometimes elected as Rector, at least in the UK, because students are the electorate. However for the same reason this isn't considered especially prestigious by people…

Also: Those of you in academia, please have a think about whether you, personally, could kick off one of these, or one of the suggestions in replies.

Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?

#304

Post by sepin4 »

hirundo wrote: post #163

Prometheus, Titan god of fire, was sentenced by Zeus to eternal torture. An eagle ate his liver every day and it grew back overnight to be eaten again. The Modern Prometheus, Victor Frankenstein, didn't end well either, dying of the arctic cold while chasing his monster. I wish Ms Elbakyan, our Even More Modern Prometheus, a kinder fate. But clearly it's a high risk job.

Knowledge is power and no one entity powerful enought likes to have it flowing freely. It would become free at about the same time the monetary system becomes obsolete, in other words never. That doesn't mean that the opposition to the powerful should stop and that is what Sci-Hub is.

Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?

#305

Post by dkarp »

qiqitori wrote: post #271
mkl wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only the existing bits. New publications wouldn't be included, so eventually the archive would become less relevant and stop being shared. There's significant cost for the required storage (currently 77TB according to andyxor's comment).

77TB (or 104 TB) sounds expensive, but many people reading this could buy that kind of storage with just one month's salary. (SeaGate IronWolf Pro 16 TB, currently $521 on Amazon)

you could do it for about $2300 by shucking external hard drives. I picked up a couple 10TB WD drives last year for $210 each for my NAS.

Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?

#306

Post by cf141q5325 »

lima wrote: post #185
jazzyjackson wrote: post #94

Is injecting malware into PDFs still a thing? If so, it could be a national security matter to give people access via a trusted source so they don’t have to go to a grey market to get their research papers. And I’ll just +1 here that even when I did have access through university, the flow for logging into elsevier was like 8 clicks, and then after finding the paper, the button to download and read it was hidden on t…

> Is injecting malware into PDFs still a thing? Nope. Most people read PDFs inside the browser, with the same sandbox protections as other web content.

Sandboxes can be escaped from.

Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?

#307

Post by dkarp »

capableweb wrote: post #289
qiqitori wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

77TB (or 104 TB) sounds expensive, but many people reading this could buy that kind of storage with just one month's salary. (SeaGate IronWolf Pro 16 TB, currently $521 on Amazon)

77 / 16 = 5.5 (6 disks) at $521 per disk turns into $3126. Seems only 11 countries in the world has a higher salary than $3126[1], and probably people wouldn't buy something like that with their entire monthly salary, so at least $5000 a month is required to be able to just dispose $3126 for some drives. That leaves 5 countries with a average salary higher than $5000. Granted, the source might not be the best, nor us…

They said "many people reading this" and HN's biggest audience is US tech workers. It wouldn't be ignorant to say that many US tech workers can afford that.

Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?

#308

Post by marcus_holmes »

jacobolus wrote: post #261
wtmt wrote: post #252

No, she’s not in real trouble this time. What seems to be in trouble is getting new papers on to Sci-Hub and it becoming a little bit less relevant over time. The courts here in India are notoriously slow on many cases. Depending on luck, the hearings don’t even start for a long time after an initial notice is sent to defendants. If the publishers are able to push the court for an earlier hearing, we’ll know how soon…

> getting new papers on to Sci-Hub and it becoming a little bit less relevant over time Sci-Hub is just as relevant as ever. What has happened is that paywalled papers published in 2021 are losing a substantial proportion of their readers and potential citations, and their future impact will be depressed compared to papers from previous years. Even when Sci-Hub starts adding papers again, there may be a significant p…

> Unestablished researchers publishing important early-career papers in paywalled journals are getting harmed.

I'm always amazed at the lack of will to change what everyone agrees is a problem.

Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?

#309

Post by matsemann »

capableweb wrote: post #289
qiqitori wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

77TB (or 104 TB) sounds expensive, but many people reading this could buy that kind of storage with just one month's salary. (SeaGate IronWolf Pro 16 TB, currently $521 on Amazon)

77 / 16 = 5.5 (6 disks) at $521 per disk turns into $3126. Seems only 11 countries in the world has a higher salary than $3126[1], and probably people wouldn't buy something like that with their entire monthly salary, so at least $5000 a month is required to be able to just dispose $3126 for some drives. That leaves 5 countries with a average salary higher than $5000. Granted, the source might not be the best, nor us…

The table doesn't list the same as the map. For instance Norway and Sweden is included in the map, but not in the table. And I don't think the average reader here should be compared to the average income around the world. Rather a top single digit percent.

Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?

#310

Post by PeterisP »

wolverine876 wrote: post #274
crumbshot wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's copying, not theft. The latter deprives someone of an item, the former increases its availability. An important distinction when considering the purpose and goals of Sci-Hub.

> It's copying, not theft. > The latter deprives someone of an item ... It's depriving people of money, which is not a trivial asset.

It's not depriving authors or the reviewers of money, since they don't get any money anyway from publishers or readers. It is depriving publishers of money by replacing them, doing the same thing they do (intermediary between author+reviewer and reader) better and cheaper i.e. for free - but that's essentially just outcompeting them in their own business. Copyright is there to protect incentives for authors, but it should not grant an artificial monopoly to useless middlemen.
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