6 ms·

Who have vested interests in stopping something like sci-hub?

LatteLazy 5y ago
Existing journal publishers. Also the FBI are sort of infamous for going after foreign, easy targets in order to make their numbers. Sci hub is run by a guy in one of the -stans as a non profit community type org I believe?
- pg_bot 5y ago
  It's run by a lady in Kazakhstan
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    In the interests of accuracy: Yes, a woman, Kazak by birth, though AFAIK she's been residing in Russia of late. Her precise whereabouts are generally kept vague. Sources: My name is Alexandra Elbakyan, I'm a web developer who created this website. I was born in Almaty, Kazakhstan and I'm 32 years old. I'm a native speaker of Russian, know English very well, and some German and ancient languages. https://sci-hub.st/alexandra https://sci-hub.st/alexandra Her academic work has been at Satbayev University (in Almaty, Kazakhstan), internships and work in Italy and Germany, from 2005--2010. She returned to Kazakhstan in 2011: I was 23 and I returned to Kazakhstan and started working as a freelance programmer. ... and has since done academic work in Russia. 2017 started a masters program in Linguistics · Biblical Languages Saint-Petersburg State University in Russia 2019 graduated from masters program · with huge troubles suspected for being Russian spy by US authorities Applied for Russian citizenship but was rejected (in 2016). See: https://sci-hub.st/alexandra#bio https://sci-hub.st/alexandra#bio Elbakyan identifies as multiracial with armenian, slavic, and asian roots: https://nitter.cc/ringo_ring/status/700626318124134400#m https://nitter.cc/ringo_ring/status/700626318124134400#m
- afandian 5y ago
  For-profit subscriptions publishers, to be clear. Not all journal publishers. An increasing number are open-access and have no interest in bringing down scihub (and the feeling is no doubt mututal!)
DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
this company: https://www.linkedin.com/company/elsevier https://www.linkedin.com/company/elsevier
- ta988 5y ago
  And the American Chemical Society that has never liked open science unless they can make money out of it.
- machinelearning 5y ago
  Let me rephrase, who is trying to take this down and has sufficient leverage to have the FBI focused on this instead of the multitude of other important things they could be doing.
  - adventured 5y ago
    During the Obama Admin years Hollywood called in Joe Biden [1] to use the US Government's resources to pursue Kim Dotcom in New Zealand, to destroy Megaupload. One can probably safely assume Elsevier has powerful friends in DC doing their bidding, trading favors. [1] https://twitter.com/kimdotcom/status/1288926291949838336 https://twitter.com/kimdotcom/status/1288926291949838336
  - DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
    > and has sufficient leverage to have the FBI focused RELX is certainly big enough to do this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RELX#Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RELX#Controversy
mrweasel 5y ago
I'm fairly certain that it's not the authors of the papers. Hiding away research behind paywalls and subscriptions is extremely weird and counter productive to free and open research. If you know that a paper exists, you can just email the authors and ask if they'll send you a pdf. My guess is that most will just send it to you, along with instructions on how to correctly cite them. Years ago I had a Danish university lawyer look at me weird and ask if I was serious, when I asked what right a public funded university had to sell a patent to a US company. My logic was, and still is, that Danish companies already paid for the research and the patent via their taxes, so they should be legally allowed to use it for free. Apparently it's crazy talk to assume that something paid for by the tax payers should actually belong to those tax payers.
- 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
  So far I have not met a researcher who held the opinion that sci-hub is a bad thing. Actually the way I learnt about sci-hub a few years ago was when I asked an acquaintance of mine whether he'd share a copy of a paper he co-wrote with me, what I got from him was a sci-hub link.

Existing journal publishers. Also the FBI are sort of infamous for going after foreign, easy targets in order to make their numbers. Sci hub is run by a guy in one of the -stans as a non profit community type org I believe?

pg_bot 5y ago
It's run by a lady in Kazakhstan
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  In the interests of accuracy: Yes, a woman, Kazak by birth, though AFAIK she's been residing in Russia of late. Her precise whereabouts are generally kept vague. Sources: My name is Alexandra Elbakyan, I'm a web developer who created this website. I was born in Almaty, Kazakhstan and I'm 32 years old. I'm a native speaker of Russian, know English very well, and some German and ancient languages. https://sci-hub.st/alexandra https://sci-hub.st/alexandra Her academic work has been at Satbayev University (in Almaty, Kazakhstan), internships and work in Italy and Germany, from 2005--2010. She returned to Kazakhstan in 2011: I was 23 and I returned to Kazakhstan and started working as a freelance programmer. ... and has since done academic work in Russia. 2017 started a masters program in Linguistics · Biblical Languages Saint-Petersburg State University in Russia 2019 graduated from masters program · with huge troubles suspected for being Russian spy by US authorities Applied for Russian citizenship but was rejected (in 2016). See: https://sci-hub.st/alexandra#bio https://sci-hub.st/alexandra#bio Elbakyan identifies as multiracial with armenian, slavic, and asian roots: https://nitter.cc/ringo_ring/status/700626318124134400#m https://nitter.cc/ringo_ring/status/700626318124134400#m
afandian 5y ago
For-profit subscriptions publishers, to be clear. Not all journal publishers. An increasing number are open-access and have no interest in bringing down scihub (and the feeling is no doubt mututal!)

DyslexicAtheist 5y ago

this company: https://www.linkedin.com/company/elsevier https://www.linkedin.com/company/elsevier

ta988 5y ago
And the American Chemical Society that has never liked open science unless they can make money out of it.
machinelearning 5y ago
Let me rephrase, who is trying to take this down and has sufficient leverage to have the FBI focused on this instead of the multitude of other important things they could be doing.
- adventured 5y ago
  During the Obama Admin years Hollywood called in Joe Biden [1] to use the US Government's resources to pursue Kim Dotcom in New Zealand, to destroy Megaupload. One can probably safely assume Elsevier has powerful friends in DC doing their bidding, trading favors. [1] https://twitter.com/kimdotcom/status/1288926291949838336 https://twitter.com/kimdotcom/status/1288926291949838336
- DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
  > and has sufficient leverage to have the FBI focused RELX is certainly big enough to do this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RELX#Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RELX#Controversy

mrweasel 5y ago

I'm fairly certain that it's not the authors of the papers. Hiding away research behind paywalls and subscriptions is extremely weird and counter productive to free and open research. If you know that a paper exists, you can just email the authors and ask if they'll send you a pdf. My guess is that most will just send it to you, along with instructions on how to correctly cite them. Years ago I had a Danish university lawyer look at me weird and ask if I was serious, when I asked what right a public funded university had to sell a patent to a US company. My logic was, and still is, that Danish companies already paid for the research and the patent via their taxes, so they should be legally allowed to use it for free. Apparently it's crazy talk to assume that something paid for by the tax payers should actually belong to those tax payers.

2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
So far I have not met a researcher who held the opinion that sci-hub is a bad thing. Actually the way I learnt about sci-hub a few years ago was when I asked an acquaintance of mine whether he'd share a copy of a paper he co-wrote with me, what I got from him was a sci-hub link.