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Sci-Hub Proves That Piracy Can be Dangerously Useful

posted by chromas on Tuesday August 14 2018, @01:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the on-the-one-hand-information-wants-to-be-expensive…on-the-other-hand,-information-wants-to-be-free dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Despite two lost legal battles in the US, domain name seizures, and millions of dollars in damage claims, Sci-Hub continues to offer unauthorized access to academic papers. The site's founder says that she would rather operate legally, but copyright gets in the way. Sci-Hub is not the problem she argues, it's a solution, something many academics appear to agree with.

Sci-Hub has often been referred to as "The Pirate Bay of Science," but that description really sells the site short.

While both sites are helping the public to access copyrighted content without permission, Sci-Hub has also become a crucial tool that arguably helps the progress of science.

The site allows researchers to bypass expensive paywalls so they can read articles written by their fellow colleagues. The information in these 'pirated' articles is then used to provide the foundation for future research.

What the site does is illegal, according to the law, but Sci-Hub is praised by thousands of researchers and academics around the world. In particular, those who don't have direct access to the expensive journals but aspire to excel in their academic field.

Source: https://torrentfreak.com/sci-hub-proves-that-piracy-can-be-dangerously-useful-180804/

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @09:22AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @09:22AM (#721715)

    OK, trolls gotta eat, so...

    In other words, the system exists as it is for a reason.

    The reason being bought and paid for legislation.

    And Sci-Hub violates the right to obtain a copy of the information that legally belongs to someone else.

    No. The text is legally (see above) bound to the publisher, the information is free as in nobody owns it.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @10:19PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @10:19PM (#721936)

    Thanks for trying to feed me, but your food isn't nourishing.

    The reason being bought and paid for legislation.

    Yep. And the laws exist for reasons too. Your disagreeing with them doesn't change that it is the system and there are those who don't get rich off it who nevertheless support it.

    No. The text is legally (see above) bound to the publisher, the information is free as in nobody owns it.

    Thanks for making the point that SciHub is in fact violating the right of the publisher to determine who gets to make a copy. Facts are free and not copyrightable. (Though ethically there is the matter of plagiarism.) Information is not necessarily free, but it is a common misconception because it is a dream of many. Moot point, anyway, because SciHub isn't simply rewriting articles in a method which just shares the information. They are infringing copyright - that same legally bound text that you noted is not theirs to pass along freely.