TechDirt reports:
Sci-Hub [is] the search engine for academic papers that includes a few tricks to access more paywalled academic papers for free, using the academic logins that have been shared with the site for the sake of retrieving more research. Academic journal publishing giant Elsevier has been waging a war with the site, first getting an injunction against its original domain back in December, only to have it quickly pop up elsewhere.
[...] Now, Sci-Hub has announced that it's available via the popular messaging app Telegram as well.
[...] From the looks of it, you can just send it a message with the title you want, and it sends you back a download link--within seconds. From a researcher's standpoint, this seems like it must be quite handy, and certainly again feels a lot like the fairly standard #icanhazpdf process used on social media by academics all the time. Just a little more automated.
Related Stories
After losing a lawsuit filed by the American Chemical Society (ACS) due to failure to appear, Sci-Hub has been ordered to pay the ACS $4.8 million. But the district court's ruling also states that the Sci-Hub website should be blocked by ISPs, search engines, and domain name registrars:
The American Chemical Society (ACS) has won a lawsuit it filed in June against Sci-Hub, a website providing illicit free access to millions of paywalled scientific papers. ACS had alleged copyright infringement, trademark counterfeiting and trademark infringement; a district court in Virginia ruled on 3 November that Sci-Hub should pay the ACS $4.8 million in damages after Sci-Hub representatives failed to attend court.
The new ruling also states that internet search engines, web hosting sites, internet service providers (ISPs), domain name registrars and domain name registries cease facilitating "any or all domain names and websites through which Defendant Sci-Hub engages in unlawful access to, use, reproduction, and distribution of the ACS Marks or ACS's Copyrighted Works."
"This case could set precedent for the extent third-parties on the internet are required to enforce government-mandated censorship," says Daniel Himmelstein, a data scientist at the University of Pennsylvania who recently analyzed how many journal papers Sci-Hub holds.
Sci-Hub hosts millions of unpaywalled, full academic papers.
Previously: Elsevier Cracks Down on "Pirate" Science Search Engines
The Research Pirates of the Dark Web
Sci-Hub, the Repository of "Infringing" Academic Papers Now Available Via "Telegram"
Elsevier Wants $15 Million Piracy Damages from Sci-Hub and Libgen
US Court Grants Elsevier Millions in Damages From Sci-Hub
Sci-Hub Faces $4.8 Million Piracy Damages and ISP Blocking
Sci-Hub is a web hydra, not unlike The Pirate Bay:
Sci-Hub is often referred to as the "Pirate Bay of Science," and this description has become more and more apt in recent weeks.
Initially, the comparison was made to illustrate that Sci-Hub is used by researchers to download articles for free, much like the rest of the world uses The Pirate Bay to get free stuff.
There are more parallels though. Increasingly, Sci-Hub has trouble keeping its domain names. Following two injunctions in the US, academic publishers now have court orders to compel domain registrars and registries to suspend Sci-Hub's addresses.
Although there is no such court order for The Pirate Bay, the notorious torrent site also has a long history of domain suspensions. Both sites appear to tackle the problem in a similar manner. They simply ignore all enforcement efforts and bypass them with new domains and other circumvention tools. They have several backup domains in place as well as unsuspendable .onion addresses, which are accessible on the Tor network.
Since late November, a lot of Sci-Hub users have switched to Sci-Hub.bz when other domains were suspended. And, when the .bz domain was targeted a few days ago, they moved to different alternatives. It's a continuous game of Whack-a-Mole that is hard to stop.
Don't forget Library Genesis .
Previously: The Research Pirates of the Dark Web
Sci-Hub, the Repository of "Infringing" Academic Papers Now Available Via "Telegram"
Elsevier Wants $15 Million Piracy Damages from Sci-Hub and Libgen
US Court Grants Elsevier Millions in Damages From Sci-Hub
Sci-Hub Faces $4.8 Million Piracy Damages and ISP Blocking
Virginia District Court Demands that ISPs and Search Engines Block Sci-Hub
Documentary puts lens on the open-access movement upending scientific publishing
Jason Schmitt was working at Atlantic Records when the online site Napster disrupted the music industry by making copyrighted songs freely available. Now, the communications and media researcher at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York, is pushing for a similar disruption of academic publishing with Paywall, a documentary about the open-access movement that debuts today in a Washington, D.C., theater. "I don't think that it's right that for-profit publishers can make 35%–40% profit margins. The content is provided for them for free by academics," Schmitt, who produced the film, says.
The documentary explores the impact of Sci-Hub, a website that provides pirated versions of paywalled papers for free online, and interviews academics and publishing figures. Schmitt says many large publishers refused to go on camera—although representatives from Science and Nature did—and he is not impressed that several have begun publishing some open-access journals. "Elsevier is as much to open access as McDonald's fast food is to healthy," he says.
Sci-Hub and Library Genesis.
Related:
The Research Pirates of the Dark Web
Wellcome Trust Recommends Free Scientific Journals
Sci-Hub, the Repository of "Infringing" Academic Papers Now Available Via "Telegram"
Research Libraries Announce Boycott of Elsevier Journals Over Open Access
Elsevier Wants $15 Million Piracy Damages from Sci-Hub and Libgen
US Court Grants Elsevier Millions in Damages From Sci-Hub
Sci-Hub Faces $4.8 Million Piracy Damages and ISP Blocking
Virginia District Court Demands that ISPs and Search Engines Block Sci-Hub
Sci-Hub Bounces from TLD to TLD
Sci-Hub Proves That Piracy Can be Dangerously Useful
Plan S: Radical Open-Access Science Initiative in Europe
Meet the Guy Behind the Libgen Torrent Seeding Movement
Libgen and Sci-Hub, regularly referred to as the 'Pirate Bay of Science', are continually under fire. However, if all of the important data is decentralized, almost any eventuality can be dealt with. Today we meet the guy leading a new movement to ensure that Libgen's archives are distributed via the highest quality torrent swarms possible.
[...] [The] torrents used by Libgen were not in good shape so 'shrine' began a movement to boost the quality of their swarms. The project was quickly spotted and then supported by two companies (Seedbox.io and UltraSeedbox.com) that offer 'seedboxes', effectively server-based torrent clients with plenty of storage space and bandwidth available – perfect for giving swarms a boost.
The project gained plenty of traction and as a follow-up thread details, considerable success. Today we catch up with 'shrine' for some history, background information, and an interesting status report.
"Ironically this all started when I saw the TorrentFreak article about [Libgen] mirrors getting taken down. I immediately decided I wanted to find a way to preserve and protect the collection," 'shrine' says.
[...] "Scientists in the Reddit threads are sharing stories of how LibGen made their research possible. Unnamed cloud providers have pledged 100TB allocation on their servers. The response has been overwhelmingly positive from everyone."
Previously:
Elsevier Cracks Down on "Pirate" Science Search Engines
The Research Pirates of the Dark Web
Sci-Hub, the Repository of "Infringing" Academic Papers Now Available Via "Telegram"
Elsevier Wants $15 Million Piracy Damages from Sci-Hub and Libgen
US Court Grants Elsevier Millions in Damages From Sci-Hub
Sci-Hub Faces $4.8 Million Piracy Damages and ISP Blocking
Virginia District Court Demands that ISPs and Search Engines Block Sci-Hub
Sci-Hub Bounces from TLD to TLD
Sci-Hub Proves That Piracy Can be Dangerously Useful
Paywall: A Documentary About the Movement for Open-Access Science Publishing
Sci-Hub Founder Criticises Sudden Twitter Ban Over Over "Counterfeit" Content
Twitter has suspended the account of Sci-Hub, a site that offers a free gateway to paywalled research. The site is accused of violating the counterfeit policy of the social media platform. However, founder Alexandra Elbakyan believes that this is an effort to silence the growing support amidst a high profile court case in India.
[...] In recent weeks, Sci-Hub has become the focus of a high-profile lawsuit in India where Elsevier, Wiley, and American Chemical Society want the site blocked. The case isn't as straightforward as in other countries, in part because access to Sci-Hub is seen as vital by many local academics.
Earlier this week, the Indian High Court declared the case an "issue of public importance," inviting experts and scientists to testify on the matter. Meanwhile, however, the pressure on Sci-Hub grows.
Judge: Sci-Hub Blocking Case "Important" For Science, Community Representations Will Be Heard
(Score: 5, Insightful) by plnykecky on Tuesday May 17 2016, @03:54PM
This looks like a possible solution to the bad situation in scientific publishing:
1) Grey-zone websites give access to papers in paywalled journals.
2) Scientists with brain and guts give up logins anonymously to support the idea of free information to the taxpayers and others.
3) The current greedy and predatory publishing system implodes.
4) A better solution will be born
Too bad Aaron is not alive..
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2016, @04:17PM
I think a better solution would be for a number of top-tier universities to assemble a buyer's cartel and use that to force down the price of journal articles - not just for their own faculty, students and libraries, but for everyone.
What's in if for the journal publishers is that this would be a way of buying time before they get permanently disrupted, a la the taxi industry.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2016, @04:53PM
a better solution would be for a number of top-tier universities to assemble a buyer's cartel and use that to force down the price of journal articles - not just for their own faculty, students and libraries, but for everyone.
Universities are businesses, they have no economic incentive to decreases prices for anyone outside of said cartel. If anything they a have incentive to increase prices for everyone else. They've had decades to do something like that and they haven't been able to muster the will. I should know, my mom is a research librarian at CU Boulder.
So, nice theory. But is a kumbaya pipe-dream.
PS, my mom thinks Sci-Hub is awesome. Librarians are some of the people most frustrated by the likes of Evilsevier because they see the shit of publishing industry every day.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2016, @05:45PM
Don't be so cynical. A lot of universities are not-for-profit and their mission involves education. It would be good if academics put principles ahead of ambition when they decide where to submit their papers. Somehow, I don't think that's going to happen much, but if it did, Elsevier, NPG, etc. would collapse immediately, and open-access journals would dominate. Instead, the academic whines about restrictive journals, submits papers to them anyway, and then figures out ways to get around the restrictions (via Sci-Hub).
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2016, @05:55PM
> A lot of universities are not-for-profit and their mission involves education.
In fact, no legitimate universities are for-profit entities. But not-for-profit legal status does not make an organization any less of a business, it just means they have to zero out the books rather than pay shareholders. It does not make them inherently less competitive. Also academics (like my mom) and administration are frequently at odds over priorities. Breaking the science publishing cartel is not high on the list.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday May 17 2016, @10:18PM
As I understand it, they have purposes other than making profit, but are not barred from profiting as your remark seems to say.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday May 17 2016, @05:49PM
I think the problem is that the top tier universities are in on the scam. They want the journals to be expensive and restricted access. I can only assume because they think this lets them hoard power and people... but its pretty freaking stupid.
Remember, MIT was in on the Aaron Swartz debacle. Yeah yeah, Swartz did something wrong, but was it any different than what was going on here? Did he deserve a life sentence for copyright infringement. MIT persecuted him just as hard as the district attorney.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday May 17 2016, @05:54PM
In short, I believe I will leave it to System of a Down to explain my feelings [youtube.com] on this.
(Amusingly enough, considering the circumstances that lead to the name of this album.)
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2016, @06:17PM
The universities are hurting too. They're hard pressed to afford the subscription rates for hundreds of bound journals for their libraries.
There undoubtedly is some collegiality though, in that the editors and reviewers of the better journals are invariably highly regarded university professors.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 18 2016, @11:58AM
Journal access is close to the only legitimate reason to go to university these days.
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Tuesday May 17 2016, @09:59PM
Top tier universities?
No way - that's nowhere near enough to make a dent.
You see: the publishers got the goods, and the universities *need* that. If 100 universities walked out, why would the publishers care?
No, if the editorial boards of many of the involved journals were to resign en masse - that'd serve as a wake up call. If scientists en masse stopped submitting their work there, it'd help a lot. But keep in mind that these publishers operate world-wide - they've got their hands on most of the last decade of research for just about any topic you can think of, and hold rights to most publication venues of repute, such that it's all but impossible for an aspiring academic to not publish with them.
TL;DR: publishers are academia's "too big to circumvent".
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Pherenikos on Tuesday May 17 2016, @06:48PM
A far better, and more accepted way of disseminating your results to the wider world, is to post your manuscript to a preprint server. In physics and math, this is arxiv.org. In my discipline it is expected that all your manuscripts are posted to the arxiv just prior to submission to a journal, and then updated to include the changes made on advise of the referees. This is completely accepted by the publishing community, and is a great way to disseminate your work more widely. These preprint manuscripts will of course lack the copy editing and formatting of the actual journal article, and many times have lower resolution figures to limit the overall file size. I personally believe this is a better and more sustainable model than the wholesale circumvention of publisher websites.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday May 17 2016, @11:09PM
Maybe the inclusion of some SVG files could compensate for this.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Wednesday May 18 2016, @12:00AM
So Evilvier is waging a war in environments where there are people that may seriously dislike them and put force behind that. Might just as well put the hand inside the home of bees. If they ever feel the need to shoot themselves in the foot at least they can get the materials from their parent company :p