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Sci-Hub, which is regularly referred to as the "Pirate Bay of science", faces another setback in a US federal court. After the site's operator failed to respond, the American Chemical Society now requests a default judgment of $4.8 million for alleged copyright infringement. In addition, the publisher wants a broad injunction which would require search engines and ISPs to block the site.
The pirate site, operated by Alexandra Elbakyan, was ordered to pay $15 million in piracy damages to academic publisher Elsevier.
With the ink on this order barely dry, another publisher soon tagged on with a fresh complaint. The American Chemical Society (ACS), a leading source of academic publications in the field of chemistry, also accused Sci-Hub of mass copyright infringement.
[...] "Sci-Hub's unabashed flouting of U.S. Copyright laws merits a strong deterrent. This Court has awarded a copyright holder maximum statutory damages where the defendant's actions were 'clearly willful' and maximum damages were necessary to 'deter similar actors in the future'," they write.
Although the deterrent effect may sound plausible in most cases, another $4.8 million in debt is unlikely to worry Sci-Hub's owner, as she can't pay it off anyway. However, there's also a broad injunction on the table that may be more of a concern.
The requested injunction prohibits Sci-Hub's owner to continue her work on the site. In addition, it also bars a wide range of other service providers from assisting others to access it.
Specifically, it restrains "any Internet search engines, web hosting and Internet service providers, domain name registrars, and domain name registries, to cease facilitating access to any or all domain names and websites through which Defendant Sci-Hub engages in unlawful access to [ACS's works]."
The above suggests that search engines may have to remove the site from their indexes while ISPs could be required to block their users' access to the site as well, which goes quite far.
Source: https://torrentfreak.com/sci-hub-faces-48-million-piracy-damages-and-isp-blocking-170905/
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 06 2017, @09:15AM (3 children)
I guess this says a lot about how our government views upcoming science students. Gotta make sure they don't know any more than they pay to know.
Who uses Sci-Hub anyway? Researchers!
Of course, industry will have to go outside this country to get kids who are self-motivated to do much more than play videogames.
We are trying to cultivate a bunch of ignoramuses over here... obedient little consumers who do what they are told.
STEM shortgage, my ass. This is like the guy cussing out the short-order chef over where he got cooking lessons. Obviously he isn't all that hungry. Otherwise, he would be trying to teach the chef how to do it right, not fining him several million dollars.
The USA elite won't pay this much attention until some other country's elite have the power to tell our elite that they no longer own stuff that they claim rights to.
(Score: 5, Informative) by lx on Wednesday September 06 2017, @09:55AM (1 child)
Apparently they already have the power.
One of the biggest opponents of open science publication, RELX/Elsevier, is based in London and Amsterdam.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 06 2017, @10:22AM
Certainly both the real pirate nests for centuries.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday September 06 2017, @11:40AM
Great post, but one quibble: "our government". It's hardly ours anymore, its government for big corporations and the rich. The corporatocracy has shown over and over that they want to charge tolls for access to information. To Sci-Hub's advantage, I've heard that winning a judgment is relatively easy. Collecting is the hard part.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 06 2017, @09:16AM (2 children)
Better get ready for a DNS block
(Score: 5, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday September 06 2017, @11:31AM
You mean the IP address? It is 80.82.77.83 and that IP address is given on the Wikipedia page about Sci-Hub.
Currently, ping (IPv4) from my location shows 104.28.20.155 for sci-hub.bz, but if you point a browser to that IP address, you get this error message from Cloudflare that direct IP access isn't allowed. http://80.82.77.83 [80.82.77.83] works.
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Wednesday September 06 2017, @11:50AM
Twitter account [twitter.com] up-right corner, there's an address - Elsevier et all, smell it and cry me a river, it's the only bookmark in my Tor-browser.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1) by xhedit on Wednesday September 06 2017, @11:37AM (1 child)
however many years and court cases later, pirate bay is still around. doubt she cares about US courts at all.
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Wednesday September 06 2017, @12:46PM
In Sweden perhaps, but the USA legal system is insanely unfair against those who are not obscenely wealthy and extremely vindictive over copyright law.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 06 2017, @11:37AM
What has been the decrease in profits?
These organizations make most of their money from institutional subscriptions, member dues, and page charges as far as I know. The case for them losing potential customers is an even harder one to make than it is for games and movies.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 06 2017, @11:54AM
How does this lawsuit advance their mission?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 06 2017, @12:29PM
Maybe it's time for an ever expanding sectioned torrent, by discipline. I mean how big could a few million PDF's be? couple hundred gigs?