It's a very very bad idea if you are going to do this sort of thing to attract any media attention or to ever talk to them about anything, much less let them take a picture of you.
Well, it makes it pretty darn obvious now that Aaron's prosecution was related to his political activities and aspirations, no? I know Aaron didn't like this cynical interpretation of the judicial system, but it seems difficult to argue against it now...
Most of the coverage appears to've started after the indictment and other legal problems caught up with Libgen. Once they've started, waging a PR fight helps.
Yes, she runs Sci-Hub. Sci-Hub eventually partnered with LibGen to help host files and reduce Sci-Hub's dependence on donated logins. (Previously all documents were accessed from their "real" journal/repository portals using credentials contributed by sympathetic academics.)
I think she has been publicly linked to Sci-Hub for a long time; by the time of the Elsevier lawsuit they knew to contact her directly.[1] Considering that she's already hiding from extradition, a little more PR probably doesn't hurt?
Upvoting because I'm interested in the discussion of the ethics surrounding 'leaking' scientific papers out into the Web, not so much in this particular case itself but as a general sort of act.
All scientific research should be freely available to the public, without reservation or condition.
I have my reservations about leaking political or classified information in some cases, because as Wikileaks has demonstrated, leaks can be used to push a political agenda, rather than serve the cause of unbiased truth.
But scientific knowledge benefits the progress of humanity as a whole - the truth doesn't have a political agenda, although it certainly can discredit political axioms. Trying to keep it contained, controlled or limit its access to a select few should be considered a crime against humanity.
That information is harmless without the resources to do anything with it. Nonproliferation is targeted at resources, not information for this very reason.
Yes, I think so. That research is already public or available on the black market anyway, and the US built the first nuclear bomb ~70 years ago, so it's kind of a moot point.
But what would the alternative be? That only the governments which discover how to build a nuclear bomb understand how it works and what its effects are, and get to threaten the rest of the world with impunity?
I'm not certain that would be better than the world where everyone at least understands the underlying science, even if not everyone can build one.
There's a big difference between the nuclear bombs countries with nascent nuclear programs (like North Korea) can build, and those the US can build. So unless you're talking about just enough knowledge to build the simplest of nuclear weapons, it's far from moot.
Everyone does understand the underlying science (or can find it pretty quickly on the internet), but very few understand the engineering specifics.
I don't see why the means of funding would be relevant. The advancement and enlightenment of humanity should be more important than profit or trade secrets.
If for-profit research didn't exist, we probably wouldn't be able to have this discussion. Do you think the likes of Bell Labs and IBM Research would have been making scientific breakthroughs if there were no financial incentive to do so? Let that sink in for a moment.
Beating the competition to make more money is the primary goal behind corporate R&D expenditures. It's essentially a form of investment, which means that it has to eventually make the company some kind of return.
The great thing is that we get the results of breakthroughs in the form of publications, patents, and eventually we see them in products. Sometimes the company decides to just release the results royalty-free: a great example of this is Volvo and the modern seatbelt.
>. Do you think the likes of Bell Labs and IBM Research would have been making scientific breakthroughs if there were no financial incentive to do so?
Maybe not, but I think even for-profit research should alwats be made freely available at some point, regardless of its value. The financial incentive may be necessary but to me it's a perverse incentive.
But without money, how do you propose we perform research? Who will feed and house the researchers? Who will pay for the building(s) the researchers work in? Who will pay for the (usually) expensive equipment needed to perform simulations and analyze the results?
And if the results don't generate money, how will you continue to support research projects in the future?
Modern scientific research is a very expensive endeavor. You could probably get scientists to do this "for free" back when a field was still in its infancy. Now you need a whole team of researchers and an entire support system to make even the smallest of scientific breakthroughs.
And by the way, universities also aim to generate a profit (usually fed back into the institution). For example, most universities take a 50% cut of whatever external funding a professor manages to get. They do provide things in return, but the key point is that they're making money off of research.
Somehow, we need to separate the need to fund science with the desire to limit access to maximize profits from it.
I'm speaking from an idealistic and naive point of view, but I don't want capitalism or politics to determine the limits of human self-awareness for future.
Then again, when it costs millions or billions of dollars to make breakthroughs, it does seem untenable to ask scientists to starve for the sake of the common good, and just expect the money to come from "somewhere" without strings attached.
Gratuitous misquoting by the Independent here: "But she also acknowledges that some passwords were obtained using the kind of phishing methods that hackers use to dupe people out of financial information." based on the quote "It may be well possible that phished passwords ended up being used at Sci-Hub. I did not send any phishing emails to anyone myself." I don't understand how an editor at a major publication allows claims/spin like this with no concrete evidence unless they are explicitly pushing an agenda (I agree that phishing is at least probable in this case; it also may be an excuse to protect those in the password database if it's ever leaked). Wholly fact-based media seems impossible to find these days.
I suspect if you cut out the number the Independent hand out for free via hotels it would be even worse. I think now they don't even have a physical edition?
These guys must pay next to nothing and demand articles that get "eyeballs", produced in little time.
Plus all are captive to their main advertisers: cars, banks, realtors.
Yes, but most don't sub. Traditional media is a shadow of its former self. The content is shockingly bad. I'd love to bring back to life the editor of these papers from 30 years ago, pretty sure they would want to be dead again.
That's very interesting. Seems like the FT is the only one to buck the trend - I wonder what they're doing differently. The Guardian also seems to be stemming the rot.
Is this a case of two globally oriented forward looking publications that are embracing new distribution mediums?
I've never read the other ones really - maybe this in itself gives a hint, though I am just a sample population of '1'.
I just noticed The Times in there as well. Okay I'm guessing from these 3 data points that it might be because they're actually charging for content, but in exchange actually providing content that is good.
Actually, the phishing theory is a very plausible explanation of where sci-hub gets passwords from. I can't imagine someone giving up their password voluntarily even if they believe in the cause. That can lead to very serious repercussions with your university. The fact that Elbakyan does not deny this explanation outright gives it further credence.
(Full disclosure: I love sci-hub.)
I saw system logins for academic libraries shared for years on private forums before sci-hub got started. I doubt that sci-hub had trouble collecting willingly shared credentials. More than a decade ago I saw full journal collections circulated via forums and semi-private FTP sites or password protected archives on sites like rapidshare. There were obviously a number of scripted download/archival efforts initiated by different people.
When I was a researcher I published articles in closed journals because that's just how the game is played. But the publishers can go to hell as far as I'm concerned. In public discussions I've occasionally seen professors take the publishers' side against open access or pirates. I've never seen graduate students be anything but grateful for easy access to articles. (Of course with this comment I am just begging for a contrarian graduate student to write an ode to the reader-pays model.)
I think if anything the article is biased in favor of Libgen. Some of the quotes from the publishing industry are just stunningly tonedeaf and the sort of quotes you use when you want to let your subject hang themselves. For example:
'“People often say to me, ‘You don’t pay the authors. You don’t pay the reviewers. You hardly print anymore. The Web is free. Why do you charge?’” said H. Frederick Dylla, the former director of the American Institute of Physics and board member of the Association of American Publishers. “It sounds like a compelling argument. But it actually isn’t.”'
or this one:
"“So is it fair then if some high-school student wants to really follow the Supreme Court and doesn’t have the money to pay?” Greco said. “Life is a bitter mystery. We can’t give everything away for free. It’s not that kind of country.”"
I now want to use these for everything. 'Why can't we have sane housing prices in SF? Because the idea that regulation has something to do with it sounds like a compelling argument. But it isn't. The truth is, life is a bitter mystery.'
I recognize this is about 15 years too late but stolen is the wrong word. The vernacular usage of stolen has an inherent bias that some entity is being deprived which isn't necessarily the case.
> The vernacular usage of stolen has an inherent bias that some entity is being deprived
The concepts of "stealing" an idea, i.e. taking credit for someone else's, and "stealing" someone's spotlight occur in standard vernacular [1]. These don't concern depriving someone of something they have, but depriving them of something they could have had. The logic behind modern copyright is that distribution someone else's content deprives them of potential sales, royalties, et cetera.
There is reasonable debate around whether science, particularly taxpayer-funded science, should be copyrighted. But arguing you can't "steal" the intangible runs counter to our culture. A more productive line of argument lies in attacking what can be copyrighted and for how long.
A great deal of the publishing industry in the United States was founded on copyright infringement.
And there is not really a case of "stealing" an idea--which is incidentally one of the most tiresome claims anyone ever makes--but rather distributing the fully-credited articles through alternative channels.
The issue is not intangibility. The issue is scarcity and ownership.
Theft is (or rather, ought to be) when you deprive someone of a scarce resource they can claim ownership over. If they can't claim ownership of it, or you're not depriving them of anything, then it's not theft.
Any given idea, after it has been conceived, is obviously not scarce; the reproduction costs for an idea are essentially zero. You can't deprive someone of any idea by copying it.
The question, then, is whether you can claim ownership over the control of an idea (i.e. who is allowed to know the idea, and how they are allowed to apply it). To me, that seems insane, but obviously not to everyone.
The level of support for this idea is astounding for a community where most people put food in their mouths by providing their employers with exclusive control of "ideas" (source code).
Our jobs would still exist in the absence of the current overbearing IP system. The legal structure would just be slightly different. There are any number of ways companies could continue to have proprietary technology without patents, and even without copyrights.
Surely the people who own the copyright are being deprived in this case. Doesn't it affect their future revenue to have 50 million articles available online for free?
I don't see how you can claim that the people who own the copyright are not being deprived. Doesn't it affect their future revenue? Isn't that why they restrict access?
Yeah, if I downloaded an article from sci-hub all it does is free up my time that I otherwise would have spent driving across town to the University library and the university is out a few bucks for using the copying machine. And I doubt the copying machine at the University is doing more than paying for its maintenance. I wouldn't have spent hundreds of dollars to get the article anyway.
Researchers sign over the copyright and provide their work, often taxpayer funded, free to publishers who then get other researchers to review the papers — also free. The publishers then sell journal subscriptions — some titles cost more than $5,000 a year — back to universities and the federal government. And if someone wants an article, that costs about $35, so that person is paying for the research and to read the results.
"The site can be clunky to use, often sending users to Web pages in foreign languages."
That has not been my experience. In fact, I'm amazed at how when I paste a paper title into sci-hub, I get immediately redirected to the paper's PDF. I doubt such a service could be provided by Google Scholar or by the commercial publishers even if it were not for the pay walls.
60 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 130 ms ] thread[1] - http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-york...
HN, what is your opinion on all this?
I have my reservations about leaking political or classified information in some cases, because as Wikileaks has demonstrated, leaks can be used to push a political agenda, rather than serve the cause of unbiased truth.
But scientific knowledge benefits the progress of humanity as a whole - the truth doesn't have a political agenda, although it certainly can discredit political axioms. Trying to keep it contained, controlled or limit its access to a select few should be considered a crime against humanity.
Even scientific research on how to build a functional nuclear bomb?
But what would the alternative be? That only the governments which discover how to build a nuclear bomb understand how it works and what its effects are, and get to threaten the rest of the world with impunity?
I'm not certain that would be better than the world where everyone at least understands the underlying science, even if not everyone can build one.
Everyone does understand the underlying science (or can find it pretty quickly on the internet), but very few understand the engineering specifics.
Beating the competition to make more money is the primary goal behind corporate R&D expenditures. It's essentially a form of investment, which means that it has to eventually make the company some kind of return.
The great thing is that we get the results of breakthroughs in the form of publications, patents, and eventually we see them in products. Sometimes the company decides to just release the results royalty-free: a great example of this is Volvo and the modern seatbelt.
Maybe not, but I think even for-profit research should alwats be made freely available at some point, regardless of its value. The financial incentive may be necessary but to me it's a perverse incentive.
And if the results don't generate money, how will you continue to support research projects in the future?
Modern scientific research is a very expensive endeavor. You could probably get scientists to do this "for free" back when a field was still in its infancy. Now you need a whole team of researchers and an entire support system to make even the smallest of scientific breakthroughs.
And by the way, universities also aim to generate a profit (usually fed back into the institution). For example, most universities take a 50% cut of whatever external funding a professor manages to get. They do provide things in return, but the key point is that they're making money off of research.
I'm speaking from an idealistic and naive point of view, but I don't want capitalism or politics to determine the limits of human self-awareness for future.
Then again, when it costs millions or billions of dollars to make breakthroughs, it does seem untenable to ask scientists to starve for the sake of the common good, and just expect the money to come from "somewhere" without strings attached.
http://imgur.com/NJ4F8Tt.jpg
I suspect if you cut out the number the Independent hand out for free via hotels it would be even worse. I think now they don't even have a physical edition?
These guys must pay next to nothing and demand articles that get "eyeballs", produced in little time.
Plus all are captive to their main advertisers: cars, banks, realtors.
Why not just read blogs?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/this-student-put-50-mil...
Is this a case of two globally oriented forward looking publications that are embracing new distribution mediums?
I've never read the other ones really - maybe this in itself gives a hint, though I am just a sample population of '1'.
When I was a researcher I published articles in closed journals because that's just how the game is played. But the publishers can go to hell as far as I'm concerned. In public discussions I've occasionally seen professors take the publishers' side against open access or pirates. I've never seen graduate students be anything but grateful for easy access to articles. (Of course with this comment I am just begging for a contrarian graduate student to write an ode to the reader-pays model.)
'“People often say to me, ‘You don’t pay the authors. You don’t pay the reviewers. You hardly print anymore. The Web is free. Why do you charge?’” said H. Frederick Dylla, the former director of the American Institute of Physics and board member of the Association of American Publishers. “It sounds like a compelling argument. But it actually isn’t.”'
or this one:
"“So is it fair then if some high-school student wants to really follow the Supreme Court and doesn’t have the money to pay?” Greco said. “Life is a bitter mystery. We can’t give everything away for free. It’s not that kind of country.”"
I now want to use these for everything. 'Why can't we have sane housing prices in SF? Because the idea that regulation has something to do with it sounds like a compelling argument. But it isn't. The truth is, life is a bitter mystery.'
The concepts of "stealing" an idea, i.e. taking credit for someone else's, and "stealing" someone's spotlight occur in standard vernacular [1]. These don't concern depriving someone of something they have, but depriving them of something they could have had. The logic behind modern copyright is that distribution someone else's content deprives them of potential sales, royalties, et cetera.
There is reasonable debate around whether science, particularly taxpayer-funded science, should be copyrighted. But arguing you can't "steal" the intangible runs counter to our culture. A more productive line of argument lies in attacking what can be copyrighted and for how long.
[1] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=steal_INF+idea...
Whose culture?
The culture that surrounds me seems organized almost chiefly, and at least largely, around radical freedom of information.
I... didn't do that. I don't think? Did I?
And there is not really a case of "stealing" an idea--which is incidentally one of the most tiresome claims anyone ever makes--but rather distributing the fully-credited articles through alternative channels.
The issue is not intangibility. The issue is scarcity and ownership.
Theft is (or rather, ought to be) when you deprive someone of a scarce resource they can claim ownership over. If they can't claim ownership of it, or you're not depriving them of anything, then it's not theft.
Any given idea, after it has been conceived, is obviously not scarce; the reproduction costs for an idea are essentially zero. You can't deprive someone of any idea by copying it.
The question, then, is whether you can claim ownership over the control of an idea (i.e. who is allowed to know the idea, and how they are allowed to apply it). To me, that seems insane, but obviously not to everyone.
But copying an idea without taking the credit isn't stealing in the English culture I am part of.
"Yeah, but if I could burn a copy..."
That's a racket.
Please, donate. The best library i've ever used - free, accessible and easy to use - just what library should look like in 2017.
That has not been my experience. In fact, I'm amazed at how when I paste a paper title into sci-hub, I get immediately redirected to the paper's PDF. I doubt such a service could be provided by Google Scholar or by the commercial publishers even if it were not for the pay walls.