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Two years ago, academic publisher Elsevier filed a complaint against Sci-Hub, Libgen and several related "pirate" sites.
The publisher accused the websites of making academic papers widely available to the public, without permission.
While Sci-Hub and Libgen are nothing like the average pirate site, they are just as illegal according to Elsevier's legal team, which swiftly obtained a preliminary injunction from a New York District Court.
The injunction ordered Sci-Hub's founder Alexandra Elbakyan, who is the only named defendant, to quit offering access to any Elsevier content. This didn't happen, however.
Sci-Hub and the other websites lost control over several domain names, but were quick to bounce back. They remain operational today and have no intention of shutting down, despite pressure from the Court.
This prompted Elsevier to request a default judgment and a permanent injunction against the Sci-Hub and Libgen defendants. In a motion filed this week, Elsevier's legal team describes the sites as pirate havens.
Source: https://torrentfreak.com/elsevier-wants-15-million-piracy-damages-from-sci-hub-and-libgen-170518/
Previously:
The Research Pirates of the Dark Web
New York Times Opinion Piece on Open Access Publishing
A Spiritual Successor to Aaron Swartz is Angering Publishers All Over Again
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 19 2017, @04:53PM (5 children)
I think Elbakyan can tell Evilvier.. Fuck you! ;-)
With a good standing on legal and moral grounds. Travel might be restricted however.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 19 2017, @04:57PM
Travel is unnecessary in the information age when every homeless bum living under a bridge can send a message anywhere in the world. I think I'll stay under the bridge today as it's cloudy and rainy and I don't feel like walking.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Friday May 19 2017, @05:09PM (3 children)
As long as she stays in Russia and/or Kazakhstan she should be fairly safe from the reaches of Evilvier, if she is ever going to go on some academic or personal trip to (western) Europe or the USA then their might be some issues.
That said I recall this being a previous topic of Soylent and when I looked thru the sites (Sci-Hub and Libgen) they where full of other, as in non academic papers, such as various books (both scanned and ebooks), comics and such. I have no idea if that has been addressed or not. That said Evilvier doesn't give a shit of there was an entire collection of Hellboy comics etc or the latest books from O'Reilly etc there. But still it did contain other things.
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/05/17/1127257 [soylentnews.org]
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=15/06/09/207218 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 19 2017, @05:21PM
If they wanted to split off the academic papers database, it should be pretty easy. The same papers may be accessible on multiple sites, some of which might not offer ebooks and comics. As you said, Elsevier only cares about the science papers.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday May 19 2017, @07:14PM (1 child)
> As long as she stays in Russia and/or Kazakhstan she should be fairly safe [...]
Both countries are members of WIPO. If they wanted to go to the trouble, the publishers could sue her there, could they not?
http://www.wipo.int/directory/en/details.jsp?country_code=RU [wipo.int]
http://www.wipo.int/directory/en/details.jsp?country_code=KZ [wipo.int]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 19 2017, @07:34PM
Let's just suppose there is a reason they don't dare to pull that one.. ;)