Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Swedish ISP punishes Elsevier for forcing it to block Sci-Hub by also blocking Elsevier
[...] Unfortunately for Swedes and for science, the Swedish Patent and Market Court (which never met a copyright overreach it didn't love) upheld the order, and Bahnhof, a small ISP with limited resources, decided not to appeal (a bigger, richer ISP had just lost a similar appeal).
Instead, Bahnhof now blocks attempts to visit Sci-Hub domains, and Elsevier.com, redirecting attempts to visit Elsevier to a page explaining how Elsevier's sleaze and bullying have allowed it to monopolize scientific publishing, paywalling publicly funded science that is selected, reviewed and edited by volunteers who mostly work for publicly funded institutions.
To as[sic] icing on this revenge-flavored cake, Bahnhof also detects attempts to visit its own site from the Patent and Market Court and redirects them to a page explaining that since the Patent and Market Court believes that parts of the web should be blocked, Bahnhof is blocking the court's access to its part of the web.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @05:31AM (17 children)
The reason there is any confusion at all is because there is such a poorly defined system of property rights, all the way down to the one-size-fits-all, arbitrary and capricious taxation through which large portions of any given project may be funded.
Privatize research entirely, and we'll ironically achieve a much more useful and much cheaper sharing of information.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Monday November 05 2018, @05:39AM (4 children)
Ah the old libertarian canard of "if you just make all the things that are bad now 1000x worse, they'll definitely get much better." No. You make a bare assertion, it's not coherent, and I reject it with only marginally more effort than the zero you put into deciding it was true.
Sharing information with the whole planet is a necessary component of scientific advancement, and hoarding information as property of any kind is directly opposed to science's mission.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @05:46AM
I agree with you: "Sharing information with the whole planet is a necessary component of scientific advancement".
Unfortunately, it takes a lot of resources to make your lunch, let alone engage in scientific research.
You CANNOT ignore accounting. You have to do serious accounting. That is the only way.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @06:19AM
I agree with you: "Sharing information with the whole planet is a necessary component of scientific advancement".
Unfortunately, it takes a lot of resources to make your lunch, let alone engage in scientific research.
You CANNOT ignore accounting. You have to do serious accounting. That is the only way.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @07:38AM
I agree with you: "Sharing information with the whole planet is a necessary component of scientific advancement".
Unfortunately, it takes a lot of resources to make your lunch, let alone engage in scientific research.
You CANNOT ignore accounting. You have to do serious accounting. That is the only way.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @07:57AM
I agree with you: "Sharing information with the whole planet is a necessary component of scientific advancement".
Unfortunately, it takes a lot of resources to make your lunch, let alone engage in scientific research.
You CANNOT ignore accounting. You have to do serious accounting. That is the only way.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Whoever on Monday November 05 2018, @05:53AM (4 children)
This isn't about privatization of research, this is about a company whose function is purely parasitic.
At one time, there was a significant cost involved in the process of printing documents. Elsevier has never paid for the editorial costs of publishing, and the cost of publishing on the Internet is close to zero. Elsevier thrives because of a perceived notion that their publications are somehow the only way to ensure authoritative scientific papers are published. It's parasitic.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @06:21AM (3 children)
Elsevier is part of the existing paradigm of poorly defined property rights.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday November 05 2018, @07:26AM (2 children)
Kill this concrete parasite first, we'll deal with the nebulous 'paradigm of poorly defined property rights' after.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Arik on Monday November 05 2018, @08:31AM (1 child)
I'm not saying it is the worst possibility.
It's not the best though, and that's for certain.
Under the existing paradigm what they do makes perfect sense. And they are parasites, beyond any doubt.
If this does not cause you to question the paradigm itself, then what would?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday November 05 2018, @10:06AM
By mergers and acquisitions, the number of big parasites in scientific publishing are small.
If my assertion is right (I might be wrong, but I don't think I'm very far away), in this case this may work well enough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @06:42AM (5 children)
Or we could criminalize the privatization of any and all research that received even a dollar of government funding. Public funds = public information. That doesn't mean the organizations who did the research can't profit from it (e.g., patents and formula copyrights), but the research and results should be immediately belong in the public domain.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @06:46AM (1 child)
Why would you want to live in a world in which you give the Men with Guns so much power?
That's just crazy.
How about you stop stealing money from people in the first place?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @12:25PM
What? Stop stealing money? Then how am I supposed to pay the Men with Guns?
Look, the first rule of fight club is steal money and give it to the guys with the guns. After that nothing else matters.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @09:51AM (2 children)
It would almost certainly be a case of Civil and not Criminal law if all research that recieved public funds were required to be entered into the Public Domain. Further, in the Pulbic Domain, anyone would be free to privatize and profit from the research, just like all the pulbishers of public domain books do. Also, it strikes me as odd to require the research papers to be Public Domain, but then allow patenting of the research. Public funding should be like a cancer to profiteers and reserved for the General Good.
(I believe what you are referring to is Free or Open Access, rather than Public Domain)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @12:22PM
Not if a federal law criminalizing this behavior was passed that had a minimum sentencing requirement that included jail time.
If "public domain" is the wrong term then pick another one that means "available to one and all". It should be available to everyone. Plus, it could/should/would be on a government research website available to one and all.
(Score: 1) by ChrisMaple on Monday November 05 2018, @07:10PM
Patenting would just mean that the owner of the patent would have a limited-time monopoly on products made from patented aspects of the research. Patents are public information anyway. A large part of the purpose of research is to increase the general store of knowledge, and that is not reduced by allowing patents based on the knowledge gained from the funded research.
The government might insist, as part of the terms of the funding, that the government share in the monetary gains of the patent, or that no patent be applied for.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Monday November 05 2018, @10:12PM
How exactly? What you'll end up with is research solely for the purpose of maintaining the economic status quo. Corporation X will fund research on Corporation X's products. It will be proprietary information, only shared if then once its profitability has been bled dry. Publicly funded research is ostensibly research for research's sake, with the goal of expanding and advancing knowledge for all.