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posted by martyb on Monday December 18 2017, @06:53AM   Printer-friendly
from the hide-and-seek dept.

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


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @07:00AM (13 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @07:00AM (#611300)

    Real actual science should be open for review and use. I think secret science is an oxymoron while it is business as usual today. We should not allow it, especially if the research that leads to publication is done using public money and resources.

    This is something also Aaron Swartz said, and they killed him for doing it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz [wikipedia.org]

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  • (Score: -1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @07:43AM (11 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @07:43AM (#611311)

    I think secret science is an oxymoron while it is business as usual today.

    Except it is NOT secret. It is very open, as long as you pay for access. Kind of like you can't read some newspaper if you didn't pay for it. Has to do with food on the table and shit like that.

    There are "free" journals, or Open Access, but in that case the submitter pays to be able to publish.

    Nothing is in this world for free.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKtsdZs9LJo [youtube.com]

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by TGV on Monday December 18 2017, @08:26AM (2 children)

      by TGV (2838) on Monday December 18 2017, @08:26AM (#611315)

      It has nothing to do with food on the table. Journals make incredible profits without investment in their actual field.

      • (Score: 4, Touché) by MostCynical on Monday December 18 2017, @08:42AM (1 child)

        by MostCynical (2589) on Monday December 18 2017, @08:42AM (#611318) Journal

        Iśn't "their field" getting both contibutors AND readers to pay for the same thing?
        That is where they invest - ensuring lock-in, and funding the law suits!

        --
        "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
        • (Score: 1) by Crash on Monday December 18 2017, @04:15PM

          by Crash (1335) on Monday December 18 2017, @04:15PM (#611438)

          It's more about notability, trust, prestige, etc. It's a problem that many would say the "professional publications" attempt to solve at too high of a price. Except there is a need for reputable curators of knowledge|information|culture. It's also debatable whether the existing publications actually solve that problem.

          Further, you can't take away the whole industry and it's dependencies without solving at least some of the other issues. Making the information free only addresses a small part of that.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @09:03AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @09:03AM (#611323)
      except that it's not open at all. if you try to share this "science" with your fellow human beings, publishers will see that you kill yourself in jail or something, you silly goose. that's the problem: censorship. fuck censorship. fuck it in science, fuck it in healthcare, fuck censorship in education, and in absolutely everything having to do with government and/or politics: fuck it very much.
    • (Score: 5, Informative) by Virindi on Monday December 18 2017, @10:13AM (1 child)

      by Virindi (3484) on Monday December 18 2017, @10:13AM (#611330)

      Nothing is in this world for free.

      Of course not! The problem is, for much of this, the public already paid for it.

      If my taxes went to keep the local newspaper afloat, you better believe I'd want the ability to read it for free (or at the cost of printing only).

      If you do research with your own money, you have every right to charge to read it. If you take my money to do your research, charging me to read the results is double dipping. The purpose of public science funding is to improve the level of knowledge of society, not to subsidize some publisher's business model.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @12:36PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @12:36PM (#611358)

        not to subsidize some publisher's business model.

        Filed under "Job creation"

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @11:26AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @11:26AM (#611336)

      Nothing is in this world for free

      "... for you, peasants."

      Profit is literally the free money left over when you pay for everything.
      So just shut up with the ideological propaganda.

      • (Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Monday December 18 2017, @12:12PM

        by cubancigar11 (330) on Monday December 18 2017, @12:12PM (#611348) Homepage Journal

        No, profit is the money given to someone to make them do something you - at the end of the day - can't get done by yourself. Leftover - pfft - it is not "leftover" when someone takes it as a fee, isn't it. Your cost is someone else's profit. Semantics, I know...

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @12:08PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @12:08PM (#611346)

      How smart you are. Well try harder because the analogy with the newspaper doesn't cut it. My taxes which I regularly pay do not include newspapers, otherwise you would damned be sure I would demand the copies for free. On the other hand my taxes DO go for scientific research which is being withheld from me and asked money to read, because of morons like you whose business model turns to be citizen right prohibition.
      Try again. And fuck you.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @04:54PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @04:54PM (#611455)

      You need to pay to be published in the mainstream journals as well.

      My experience with publishing (as a grad student):
      Pay to get a paper submitted,
      Professor then reviews X number of similarly submitted papers from other writers, for free (not sure on what the compensation is, but it isn't money)
      Journal publishes the professor approved papers online, requiring subscription to see,
      Journal may publish printed work for libraries, for large sums of money.

      Basically, the 'free' journals just remove the last two income sources, and don't print works, the submission fees probably support the website.

    • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday December 18 2017, @10:37PM

      by Freeman (732) on Monday December 18 2017, @10:37PM (#611613) Journal

      Except where they are getting government funding via our taxes. (The Reason it should be public domain in the first place.)

      --
      Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday December 18 2017, @07:14PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 18 2017, @07:14PM (#611535) Journal

    I think secret science is an oxymoron

    That is scientific heresy.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.