20 ms·

Elsevier Complaint Shuts Down Sci-Hub Domain Name

450 points by yunque 10y ago

lake99 10y ago
On the bright side, this will give some much-needed publicity to Tor Browser. Sci-hub is still available at http://scihub22266oqcxt.onion/ http://scihub22266oqcxt.onion/
- copperx 10y ago
  Does using Tor puts you on some kind of list? It would be tragic if someone used Tor to read a scientific article but then got charged with aiding terrorism or looking for child pornography.
  - ldehaan 10y ago
    nope. tor is anonymizing software used by many thousands of people. if you're really concerned use a VPN first, and download the tor browser using VPN. unnecessary IMO, but if you're concerned then this will give you an extra layer of protection.
    - JadeNB 10y ago
      > tor is anonymizing software used by many thousands of people. Many thousands of people out of several billion (I assume …) Internet users is a small enough percentage that it's probably worth someone's while to make a list out of it. A sibling comment has claimed that the NSA specifically notes Tor use (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11637635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11637635).
  - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
    Using Tor does put you on some kind of list, but you aren't going to get charged with aiding terrorism or looking for child pornography because of it. Unless you use it for those things, I guess, and get caught.
    - hackuser 10y ago
      > you aren't going to get charged What is this based on? If it's rationality, that doesn't always apply to legal and political matters, to the very human human beings who make those decisions, or to the politial situation around them.
      - paulmd 10y ago
        Using Tor isn't a crime, but the NSA targets people who use or even search about Tor or VPN services for collection through the XKEYSCORE program. So his post is exactly right - using Tor does "put you on a list", but that alone isn't sufficient to be arrested. The NSA documents further state that Tor is relatively difficult to attack and the best they can do is deanonymize a small (and importantly, random) fraction of users some of the time. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-07/04/nsa-targeting-tor-users http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-07/04/nsa-targeting...
        hackuser 10y ago
        I'm familiar with that theory, but do you have any data to support it? For example, maybe they will find another reason to arrest you; maybe they will cite your Tor usage to the judge, jury and public as evidence of your criminal nature.
  - ocharles 10y ago
    There's a good chance you'll end up on a list if you're an exit node, but if you're just using Tor I think you should be good.
  - wolfgke 10y ago
    > Does using Tor puts you on some kind of list? It would be tragic if someone used Tor to read a scientific article but then got charged with aiding terrorism or looking for child pornography. If it does, it becomes an ethical maxim to use Tor. If it doesn't, then you can simply use Tor. So by case analysis you should use Tor.
    - lake99 10y ago
      > If it does, it becomes an ethical maxim to use Tor. This is one of the reasons I use Tor. If there is such a list, I want it to be full of people doing ordinary stuff. In effect, I want the list to be useless.
      - NoGravitas 10y ago
        Indeed, this is the main reason I'm using Signal (and badgering my friends into using it). I want to increase the volume of encrypted non-sensitive stuff, so that the "list" doesn't have predictive value.
        wolfgke 10y ago
        Having metadata (i.e. who communicates with who at which time etc.) still has lots of value for the three-letter agencies (some even say it's even more important then the content of the messages itself). As far as I know Signal does nothing to avoid this kind of metadata (but please correct me if I'm wrong).
  - morgante 10y ago
    The fact that using Tor puts you on some kind of list makes it essential that you do in fact use it for innocuous purposes occasionally. Seeking privacy should never be a crime.
  - return0 10y ago
    We re all in lists. In fact, the more lists we're in, the less traceable we are.
  - middleclick 10y ago
    The fact that you even have to think this suggests that you should use Tor so that they don't win in self-censoring the citizens.
  - bwoj 10y ago
    Not sure why everyone is downvoting. You may not go on a list, but you could be targeted by the FBI if they can produce "probable cause" http://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/constitutional-rights/fbi-labled-tor-browser-users-criminals/ http://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/constitutional-rights...
nyolfen 10y ago
.cc still works for those who need it
- mtgx 10y ago
  It could probably use .se as well. TPB's .se domain still seems to be alive and kicking.
jfaucett 10y ago
"As a result of the legal battle the site (sci-hub.io) just lost one of its latest domain names. However, the site has no intentions of backing down, and will continue its fight to keep access to scientific knowledge free and open." Does this not enrage people? Elsevier and closed-access journals like them, are doing all they can to impede human progress while leaching off of tax-payer dollars to do so. Something should be done to make what Elsevier and the like do illegal, are there any groups/political parties/etc going after them?
- tmptmp 10y ago
  >>Does this not enrage people? Elsevier and closed-access journals like them, are doing all they can to impede human progress while leaching off of tax-payer dollars to do so. Something should be done to make what Elsevier and the like do illegal, are there any groups/political parties/etc going after them? This does enrage many people, but one feels somewhat helpless here. But we can surely raise a hue and cry over the internet/emails/whatsapp/social media etc. Let more and more of the scientific community know about the existence of sci-hub and let these scum publishers bleed to death. Political parties may not want to disturb their money-givers though.
- return0 10y ago
  The onus is on the scientists. Elsevier does its job. If you were given a golden ring as a gift every day, I bet you would end up opening a jewelry shop as well. Even if scientists want to use alternative open access publishers, it's a game of who blinks first. They won't do it because their colleagues don't.
  - devishard 10y ago
    > The onus is on the scientists. Elsevier does its job. If you were given a golden ring as a gift every day, I bet you would end up opening a jewelry shop as well. The idea that Elsevier is somehow not responsible for their actions because they're just doing their job is abhorrent, and I entirely reject it. If what you do is actively harmful to society, the onus is on you to fix it. Yes, the onus is also on scientists, too, to not enable Elsevier's bad behavior, but they're not the ones choosing Elsevier's access policies; they only have indirect control.
atemerev 10y ago
While I support open science and Sci-Hub is great, I also can see publisher's side. Imagine the same site with pirated high quality scientific books. (There are some, but in darker corners of the Internet). Would open access to these books be advantageous for humanity? Most definitely. Will publishers get mad about it? Even more definitely. Should publisher's work be free? I think not. However, you can't get both sides of the coin at once. Either authors are paying publishers to get their papers peer reviewed and published (they do now), or publishers may collect payments from readers and libraries. Not both ways.
- rainforest 10y ago
  > Should publisher's work be free? I think not. What value does the publisher's work add to the work the author generated?
  - mkohlmyr 10y ago
    Presumably the value in a journal publisher is: a) it's name, being accepted to certain journals is an indicator of quality b) to readers who are guaranteed published works have been peer reviewed That being said I'm not a massive fan and I believe there is probably a model whereby you can get these value-adds without the closed down subscription system. Publicly funded research should be publicly available.
    - vixen99 10y ago
      Sorry but its name!
  - raphman_ 10y ago
    > What value does the publisher's work add to the work the author generated? - organizing peer review - spell-checking and fixing layout problems - making sure that the paper stays available for a long time - handling complaints and retracting fraudulent papers - providing a single point of contact for people who would like to reuse published material (e.g., using illustrations in a textbook). Sure, many publishers don't do a very good job for the money they are taking. Sure, there might be better approaches for disseminating knowledge than the current one. However, in the world as it is now, publishers can and do provide some value.
zo1 10y ago
Is there a donate location of sorts that we can pay into to support the efforts that the sci-hub person/team/organization is doing? This is a another good cause that I would find worthy to donate to. Edit. Ok, found it: http://www.sci-hub.cc/donate http://www.sci-hub.cc/donate Apparently, only bitcoin donations are possible at the moment. BitCoint Wallet for donations: 1K4t2vSBSS2xFjZ6PofYnbgZewjeqbG1TM
- finnn 10y ago
 I see a different Bitcoin address. I recommend people visit the site and not use the address random commenters on the internet post. Not saying the parent comment is up to something, sci-hub may have rotated the address for whatever reason. The one I see starts with 14ghuGKD EDIT: Ah, interestingly, the 1K4t2v address appears on the scihub.cc homepage, but not the donate page that was linked
 - Fuxy 10y ago
 Accessing the ip posted in the article it shows the bitcoin address posted by the OP. I even switch over to https to make sure the request is not modified.
 - finnn 10y ago
 >switching to https They don't even have a valid certificate for that domain. BUT interestingly, on a US (DO NYC) server or my house (US/Comcast): $ curl http://sci-hub.cc/donate Please donate to Bitcoin: 14ghuGKDAPdEcUQN4zuzGwBUrhQgACwAyA% however, on a French (OVH) server: $ curl http://sci-hub.cc/donate <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> {cut for brevity, a fair amount of HTML here} Please send donations to bitcoin wallet: 1K4t2vSBSS2xFjZ6PofYnbgZewjeqbG1TM {more HTML} DNS reports that the domain's IP is 31.184.194.81 from all tested locations. I get the HTML page with the 1K4t address over tor as well
 - iamnothere 10y ago
 Tested from US university IP, I also get the 1K4t wallet address. Maybe a caching issue with the CDN (assuming they use one)?
thesimon 10y ago
Why exactly was a New York court able to issue an injunction for a ".io" domain? It is a British Territory extension being managed by "Internet Computer Bureau Ltd" based in the United Kingdom.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
chinathrow 10y ago
I would love to learn more why Elsevier _only_ reports a profit of 37%? I've read here on HN and elsewhere multiple times, that most of the work done is outsourced to third party labor, which is done essentially for free: - writing papers - organising reviews - reviewing papers
- teh 10y ago
  I worked as a contractor for MacMillan (they publish nature) and it's hard to believe how much money they spend for no results. The project I was on had been running for a year when I joined. I noped out after three months and I heard it was shut down a few months after I left with nothing to show. That was 4-6 people full time and my entire floor of 80 people was full of projects like that - projects you never heard of. The weird thing is that everyone I worked with directly was very smart, and went on to do cool stuff. Summary: If I had to guess the remaining profit is wasted on silly projects and high manager salaries.
leni536 10y ago
(Thanks for daveguy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11593881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11593881) https://31.184.194.81/ https://31.184.194.81/ (sci-hub.io cert) https://sci-hub.cc https://sci-hub.cc (same ip as above, sci-hub.io cert) https://sci-hub.ac https://sci-hub.ac (same ip as above, sci-hub.io cert) https://sci-hub.bz https://sci-hub.bz (uses a separate certificate and ip address -- 104.28.20.155) And a tor site: scihub22266oqcxt.onion
- Fuxy 10y ago
  Anybody know a linux script/software that would 'lock' a domain down to am IP regardless what the registrar does. Maybe have even a out of band way of updating it without the registrars involvement. I guess what I'm looking for would be P2P DNS server although making sure the data is not fake would be difficult without some kind of signing. Wonder if it could use the bitcoin ledger as a kind of key server? Edit: I know /etc/hosts does the job it's just lacking if the server changes IP
  - return0 10y ago
    /etc/hosts ?
  - hartator 10y ago
    echo "google.com 127.0.0.1" >> /etc/hosts
    - niels_olson 10y ago
      Yeah, I recommend against this particular example :)
      - amelius 10y ago
        Do this on your friends and families computers, and change the world.
    - iainnash 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
return0 10y ago
trivial but handy bookmarklet link for scihub: javascript:window.location='http://sci-hub.bz/'+window.location
x5n1 10y ago
Long live Aaron Swartz
chias 10y ago
I feel a little tingle of excitement seeing my own papers on Sci-Hub. I mean I get that they're trying to index all publications so it's not a "stamp or approval" or anything... but it does mean that people can actually access the knowledge I tried to throw into the world, which was kind of the whole point in doing it. I'd update my academic website to link my papers to their sci-hub URLs if I didn't think I'd catch a world of flak for it.
- dougmccune 10y ago
  I'm genuinely curious who you think would give you flak. Publishers? Your department faculty? The librarian at your university? Your peers? (reason I'm interested: I'm on the board of Sage and have a board meeting tomorrow where I hope we'll be discussing sci-hub)
  - chias 10y ago
    I'm mostly concerned about what my department would do under pressure from publishers and/or the government. Being part of a state university, publicly endorsing illegal actions is unwise on my part. Especially if they undermine the establishment that the school serves.
    - dougmccune 10y ago
      Thanks for the insight. I'm curious to follow it through and try to understand what you think practical repercussions would be. So say you have your CV up online with sci-hub links, and a publisher does somehow complain to the university. Wouldn't the worst that happens be you change it and say sorry? Or do you think there would be more serious consequences? Is being seen as "pro piracy" a black mark that would stay with you somehow?
      - chias 10y ago
        I don't think there would be any real repercussions. But this close to the end, it seems foolish to bet the last six years of my life on a mildly amusing act of civil disobedience. While I have complete faith in my department not being staffed with idiots and zealots, I have no similar faith in our government. Being a state school, that's ultimately who we answer to. The whole Aaron Schwartz debacle evaporated any faith I might have had in our government's ability to deal with this sort of thing like grownups.
wyager 10y ago
Domain names should not, in principle, be subject to the arbitrary edicts of governments. I hope that, in the future, we switch to a decentralised and cryptographically incorruptible system a la Namecoin.
- DarkLinkXXXX 10y ago
  Being free would also be nice. But of course, we also need a way to disincentive squatting.
thaw13579 10y ago
Maybe this is an opportune time to bring up a related concern. It's crucial that any system for disseminating scientific work be reliable and persist indefinitely. I don't like the current system, but I wonder how this will be achieved otherwise.
- DarkLinkXXXX 10y ago
  I agree. I don't want papers to dissapear indefinitely due to an IT mistake, and I'm sure there are many researchers that don't save previous papers locally. That, and being able to access cited works is also important.
blue_dinner 10y ago
Just like with music and file sharing, this will not hurt the large corporations. It will only hurt the researchers that depend on these papers for funding and make it more difficult for them to make a living in the future. It will also push companies to keep research more private and proprietary. Why would I spend millions of dollars on research, only to have it freely distributed to everyone, including my potential competitors? I've never witnesses a time where more people fight to give up more and more of their own power and hand it over to governments and large corporations on a silver platter...and then complain when it's all gone.
- gradschool 10y ago
  Are you aware that unlike musicians, academic researchers don't get paid royalties on their publications? A list of prestigious publications on one's cv leads to funding and job opportunities regardless of whether anyone pays to read them.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    Lots of academics are collecting royalties on books. Typically not large royalties, but they are collecting them.
    - gradschool 10y ago
      Yes, that's a fair point. I was thinking only of journal articles and conference proceedings. One way of making money off textbooks is to be a professor in an institution with a large number of students and make them a requirement for the course. It also helps to make a few small changes every year and call it a new edition, so each year the next class of students has to buy new ones instead of used copies from the previous year's class. I question whether this practice is worth defending.
      - SCHiM 10y ago
        > Yes, that's a fair point. I was thinking only of journal articles and conference proceedings. One way of making money off textbooks is to be a professor in an institution with a large number of students Yeah that behaviour is detestable. Absolutely utterly unethical and everyone who engages in this type of behaviour should take a long look in the mirror and realize that there's an Evil person looking back. I've lost so much money to f*ckers like this and I have no recourse, it makes me so mad I can spit.
chris_wot 10y ago
I wonder if there is a way of distributing a signed file that contains the IP address of sci-hub over a distributed medium? Someone else would just need to write a small script that copied it into the system's host file - but make it generic enough that it works for anything. That would help non-technical users. This would stop courts from going after centralised name servers. There really needs to be a way of decentralising name servers.
- DarkLinkXXXX 10y ago
  It's possible in principle. Just use public-key cryptography (perhaps the SSL cert of the website), grep and ed. You could have it update once a day from the sites listed, or perhaps create some type of dht backend. P.S. This dht-based P2P dns project might interest you. https://github.com/mwarning/KadNode https://github.com/mwarning/KadNode
  - chris_wot 10y ago
    What about distributing it? Is there a way of decentralizing that? I notice there is Tahoe lafs... https://www.tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs https://www.tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs
    - chris_wot 10y ago
      And of course, ipfs. Still trying to get my head around how it actually works!
- duaneb 10y ago
  Namecoin fits the bill.
grownseed 10y ago
Recently shared this here: http://www.thebookseller.com/news/elsevier-defends-its-value-after-open-access-disputes-328037 http://www.thebookseller.com/news/elsevier-defends-its-value... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11614926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11614926) which I'm guessing is the precursor to this debacle. Reading what Elsevier have to say, you'd think they're either completely delusional (I doubt so), or know full well that they're rapidly becoming irrelevant/abhorred and are adopting a bully position, all the while pretending to be innocent and blameless victims of this situation. Don't count on me to shed a tear when Elsevier go under.
- grownseed 10y ago
  Just saw Elsevier retweeted this: "Science is better and more accurate when it's inclusive." (https://twitter.com/ElsevierConnect/status/728215525868875780 https://twitter.com/ElsevierConnect/status/72821552586887578...) I realize this is about gender, but I can't help but feel a bit of irony in there...
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    Great observation. They're calling their own BS indirectly. Whoever is involved in SciHub with strong presence on social media should immediately start using that quote to push SciHub. :)
chrismonsanto 10y ago
> Meanwhile, academic pirates continue to flood to Sci-Hub, domain seizure or not. I realize readers of torrentfreak.com have a different relationship with the word "pirate" but-- This is not piracy. You are entitled to read work from Sci-Hub, as your taxes funded the researchers who created the work. We academics want you to read our work, we do not benefit in any way from publisher paywalls. We continue to publish in these venues because it is necessary for career advancement (whether for us, or for our students). Please continue to "pirate" our work, and please spread the word about this problem.
- fudged71 10y ago
  Is this argument valid internationally? My canadian taxes didn't pay for american research, should I still be able to access those papers?
  - squidfood 10y ago
    I'm in the U.S. and enjoy a few Canada-based journals that detail work funded by Canada. Fair trade, eh?
  - uxp 10y ago
    Sure. Same way that if you were to drive down for a weekend and not pay taxes on the roads you specifically used across the border. Until thousands of Canadians come down every weekend just so they can use American roads and then go back home to fill up on gas, we won't worry about it.
  - chrismonsanto 10y ago
    Researchers regularly make use of work from other countries, the scientific community is international. Even if one could make an argument for not allowing Canadians to access US research without payment, it doesn't follow that Elsevier and friends are the ones who should be paid. Research done by government employees is legally required to be public domain. I see no reason we shouldn't extend that to researchers who take government funding.
- return0 10y ago
cessor 10y ago
"We wish to set back society, because we want to make more money". I use Sci-Hub all the time. I can access all papers via my library subscriptions so I actually DO have paid access to everything, but searching with and authenticating against my university library's services is slow and tedious and not feasible if I want to download many papers quickly.
- return0 10y ago
  Plus multiple times sciencedirect was down for me.
gherkin0 10y ago
How big is the sci-hub database? Are there full/partial mirrors published anywhere?
- DarkLinkXXXX 10y ago
  We can see here, over 50mil papers. http://libgen.io/scimag/repository_torrent_notforall/ http://libgen.io/scimag/repository_torrent_notforall/ As you can see here, they have three mirrors. One Moscow, one Ocean(ia?), and one Cyber(ia?). Libgen also has a mirror. As for BookSC, they seem to be quite a bit out of date, or something.
joelthelion 10y ago
Are people working on a better system to replace DNS? This little game is quickly becoming tiring.
- dest 10y ago
  namecoin, Tor adresses...
- ashitlerferad 10y ago
  GNUnet has the GNU name system: https://www.gnunet.org/gns https://www.gnunet.org/gns
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    Tks for tip. Never heard of it.
mnl 10y ago
Yet again, please don't mention other sites here or in reddit etc. Being in the spotlight is not good for them. What they are doing is morally fine in my book, but infringes the law and you are contributing to their demise. Keep it low profile, the more you blab about them the sooner they are gone. And until the next platform makes it -if it does, you can't guarantee it will- it is going to cause a lot of damage to many careers out there, because there are many people that have no choice but this one. If this is a war, it is a war of attrition, it can't be won by pointing out the targets.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
michakirschbaum 10y ago
Looking forward to watching the Streisand Effect play out.
plg 10y ago
why not set it up as a tor hidden service?
cloudjacker 10y ago
yeah but where's the torrent?
jheriko 10y ago
As much as I completely support freedom of information there is a problem with not respecting the law that seems to be growing... I might disagree with the law. I might break it intentionally, but I do my due diligence and do it knowingly. When i get caught I hold up my hands and face the consequences because I entered into that knowingly. I have actually done this irl. This is why I have no respect for this, or for Uber, Aaron Schwartz or this entire ridiculous movement of subversion instead of facing up to the challenge and taking it extremely seriously and tackling it up front and openly with some pride and courage. I'm glad people are fighting to keep this alive anyway. That imo is part of the right approach, to defeat the law by showing its futility in the face of reality when it is very far into the wrong. But ffs, don't hide from what you have done like some kind of child. Face up to your responsiblity and take it on the chin... and let people be angry about that, because that is an actual, serious wrong. "Words are wind."
alwaysdownvoted 10y ago
echo "93.174.95.27 elsevier.com" >> /etc/hosts http://elsevier.com/scimag http://elsevier.com/scimag

450 points by yunque 10y ago

On the bright side, this will give some much-needed publicity to Tor Browser. Sci-hub is still available at http://scihub22266oqcxt.onion/ http://scihub22266oqcxt.onion/

copperx 10y ago
Does using Tor puts you on some kind of list? It would be tragic if someone used Tor to read a scientific article but then got charged with aiding terrorism or looking for child pornography.
- ldehaan 10y ago
  nope. tor is anonymizing software used by many thousands of people. if you're really concerned use a VPN first, and download the tor browser using VPN. unnecessary IMO, but if you're concerned then this will give you an extra layer of protection.
  - JadeNB 10y ago
    > tor is anonymizing software used by many thousands of people. Many thousands of people out of several billion (I assume …) Internet users is a small enough percentage that it's probably worth someone's while to make a list out of it. A sibling comment has claimed that the NSA specifically notes Tor use (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11637635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11637635).
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
  Using Tor does put you on some kind of list, but you aren't going to get charged with aiding terrorism or looking for child pornography because of it. Unless you use it for those things, I guess, and get caught.
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > you aren't going to get charged What is this based on? If it's rationality, that doesn't always apply to legal and political matters, to the very human human beings who make those decisions, or to the politial situation around them.
    - paulmd 10y ago
      Using Tor isn't a crime, but the NSA targets people who use or even search about Tor or VPN services for collection through the XKEYSCORE program. So his post is exactly right - using Tor does "put you on a list", but that alone isn't sufficient to be arrested. The NSA documents further state that Tor is relatively difficult to attack and the best they can do is deanonymize a small (and importantly, random) fraction of users some of the time. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-07/04/nsa-targeting-tor-users http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-07/04/nsa-targeting...
      - hackuser 10y ago
        I'm familiar with that theory, but do you have any data to support it? For example, maybe they will find another reason to arrest you; maybe they will cite your Tor usage to the judge, jury and public as evidence of your criminal nature.
- ocharles 10y ago
  There's a good chance you'll end up on a list if you're an exit node, but if you're just using Tor I think you should be good.
- wolfgke 10y ago
  > Does using Tor puts you on some kind of list? It would be tragic if someone used Tor to read a scientific article but then got charged with aiding terrorism or looking for child pornography. If it does, it becomes an ethical maxim to use Tor. If it doesn't, then you can simply use Tor. So by case analysis you should use Tor.
  - lake99 10y ago
    > If it does, it becomes an ethical maxim to use Tor. This is one of the reasons I use Tor. If there is such a list, I want it to be full of people doing ordinary stuff. In effect, I want the list to be useless.
    - NoGravitas 10y ago
      Indeed, this is the main reason I'm using Signal (and badgering my friends into using it). I want to increase the volume of encrypted non-sensitive stuff, so that the "list" doesn't have predictive value.
      - wolfgke 10y ago
        Having metadata (i.e. who communicates with who at which time etc.) still has lots of value for the three-letter agencies (some even say it's even more important then the content of the messages itself). As far as I know Signal does nothing to avoid this kind of metadata (but please correct me if I'm wrong).
- morgante 10y ago
  The fact that using Tor puts you on some kind of list makes it essential that you do in fact use it for innocuous purposes occasionally. Seeking privacy should never be a crime.
- return0 10y ago
  We re all in lists. In fact, the more lists we're in, the less traceable we are.
- middleclick 10y ago
  The fact that you even have to think this suggests that you should use Tor so that they don't win in self-censoring the citizens.
- bwoj 10y ago
  Not sure why everyone is downvoting. You may not go on a list, but you could be targeted by the FBI if they can produce "probable cause" http://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/constitutional-rights/fbi-labled-tor-browser-users-criminals/ http://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/constitutional-rights...

nyolfen 10y ago

.cc still works for those who need it

mtgx 10y ago
It could probably use .se as well. TPB's .se domain still seems to be alive and kicking.

jfaucett 10y ago

"As a result of the legal battle the site (sci-hub.io) just lost one of its latest domain names. However, the site has no intentions of backing down, and will continue its fight to keep access to scientific knowledge free and open." Does this not enrage people? Elsevier and closed-access journals like them, are doing all they can to impede human progress while leaching off of tax-payer dollars to do so. Something should be done to make what Elsevier and the like do illegal, are there any groups/political parties/etc going after them?

tmptmp 10y ago
>>Does this not enrage people? Elsevier and closed-access journals like them, are doing all they can to impede human progress while leaching off of tax-payer dollars to do so. Something should be done to make what Elsevier and the like do illegal, are there any groups/political parties/etc going after them? This does enrage many people, but one feels somewhat helpless here. But we can surely raise a hue and cry over the internet/emails/whatsapp/social media etc. Let more and more of the scientific community know about the existence of sci-hub and let these scum publishers bleed to death. Political parties may not want to disturb their money-givers though.
return0 10y ago
The onus is on the scientists. Elsevier does its job. If you were given a golden ring as a gift every day, I bet you would end up opening a jewelry shop as well. Even if scientists want to use alternative open access publishers, it's a game of who blinks first. They won't do it because their colleagues don't.
- devishard 10y ago
  > The onus is on the scientists. Elsevier does its job. If you were given a golden ring as a gift every day, I bet you would end up opening a jewelry shop as well. The idea that Elsevier is somehow not responsible for their actions because they're just doing their job is abhorrent, and I entirely reject it. If what you do is actively harmful to society, the onus is on you to fix it. Yes, the onus is also on scientists, too, to not enable Elsevier's bad behavior, but they're not the ones choosing Elsevier's access policies; they only have indirect control.

atemerev 10y ago

While I support open science and Sci-Hub is great, I also can see publisher's side. Imagine the same site with pirated high quality scientific books. (There are some, but in darker corners of the Internet). Would open access to these books be advantageous for humanity? Most definitely. Will publishers get mad about it? Even more definitely. Should publisher's work be free? I think not. However, you can't get both sides of the coin at once. Either authors are paying publishers to get their papers peer reviewed and published (they do now), or publishers may collect payments from readers and libraries. Not both ways.

rainforest 10y ago
> Should publisher's work be free? I think not. What value does the publisher's work add to the work the author generated?
- mkohlmyr 10y ago
  Presumably the value in a journal publisher is: a) it's name, being accepted to certain journals is an indicator of quality b) to readers who are guaranteed published works have been peer reviewed That being said I'm not a massive fan and I believe there is probably a model whereby you can get these value-adds without the closed down subscription system. Publicly funded research should be publicly available.
  - vixen99 10y ago
    Sorry but its name!
- raphman_ 10y ago
  > What value does the publisher's work add to the work the author generated? - organizing peer review - spell-checking and fixing layout problems - making sure that the paper stays available for a long time - handling complaints and retracting fraudulent papers - providing a single point of contact for people who would like to reuse published material (e.g., using illustrations in a textbook). Sure, many publishers don't do a very good job for the money they are taking. Sure, there might be better approaches for disseminating knowledge than the current one. However, in the world as it is now, publishers can and do provide some value.

zo1 10y ago

Is there a donate location of sorts that we can pay into to support the efforts that the sci-hub person/team/organization is doing? This is a another good cause that I would find worthy to donate to. Edit. Ok, found it: http://www.sci-hub.cc/donate http://www.sci-hub.cc/donate Apparently, only bitcoin donations are possible at the moment. BitCoint Wallet for donations: 1K4t2vSBSS2xFjZ6PofYnbgZewjeqbG1TM

finnn 10y ago
I see a different Bitcoin address. I recommend people visit the site and not use the address random commenters on the internet post. Not saying the parent comment is up to something, sci-hub may have rotated the address for whatever reason. The one I see starts with 14ghuGKD EDIT: Ah, interestingly, the 1K4t2v address appears on the scihub.cc homepage, but not the donate page that was linked
- Fuxy 10y ago
 Accessing the ip posted in the article it shows the bitcoin address posted by the OP. I even switch over to https to make sure the request is not modified.
 - finnn 10y ago
 >switching to https They don't even have a valid certificate for that domain. BUT interestingly, on a US (DO NYC) server or my house (US/Comcast): $ curl http://sci-hub.cc/donate Please donate to Bitcoin: 14ghuGKDAPdEcUQN4zuzGwBUrhQgACwAyA% however, on a French (OVH) server: $ curl http://sci-hub.cc/donate <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> {cut for brevity, a fair amount of HTML here} Please send donations to bitcoin wallet: 1K4t2vSBSS2xFjZ6PofYnbgZewjeqbG1TM {more HTML} DNS reports that the domain's IP is 31.184.194.81 from all tested locations. I get the HTML page with the 1K4t address over tor as well
 - iamnothere 10y ago
 Tested from US university IP, I also get the 1K4t wallet address. Maybe a caching issue with the CDN (assuming they use one)?

thesimon 10y ago

Why exactly was a New York court able to issue an injunction for a ".io" domain? It is a British Territory extension being managed by "Internet Computer Bureau Ltd" based in the United Kingdom.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

chinathrow 10y ago

I would love to learn more why Elsevier _only_ reports a profit of 37%? I've read here on HN and elsewhere multiple times, that most of the work done is outsourced to third party labor, which is done essentially for free: - writing papers - organising reviews - reviewing papers

teh 10y ago
I worked as a contractor for MacMillan (they publish nature) and it's hard to believe how much money they spend for no results. The project I was on had been running for a year when I joined. I noped out after three months and I heard it was shut down a few months after I left with nothing to show. That was 4-6 people full time and my entire floor of 80 people was full of projects like that - projects you never heard of. The weird thing is that everyone I worked with directly was very smart, and went on to do cool stuff. Summary: If I had to guess the remaining profit is wasted on silly projects and high manager salaries.

leni536 10y ago

(Thanks for daveguy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11593881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11593881) https://31.184.194.81/ https://31.184.194.81/ (sci-hub.io cert) https://sci-hub.cc https://sci-hub.cc (same ip as above, sci-hub.io cert) https://sci-hub.ac https://sci-hub.ac (same ip as above, sci-hub.io cert) https://sci-hub.bz https://sci-hub.bz (uses a separate certificate and ip address -- 104.28.20.155) And a tor site: scihub22266oqcxt.onion

Fuxy 10y ago
Anybody know a linux script/software that would 'lock' a domain down to am IP regardless what the registrar does. Maybe have even a out of band way of updating it without the registrars involvement. I guess what I'm looking for would be P2P DNS server although making sure the data is not fake would be difficult without some kind of signing. Wonder if it could use the bitcoin ledger as a kind of key server? Edit: I know /etc/hosts does the job it's just lacking if the server changes IP
- return0 10y ago
  /etc/hosts ?
- hartator 10y ago
  echo "google.com 127.0.0.1" >> /etc/hosts
  - niels_olson 10y ago
    Yeah, I recommend against this particular example :)
    - amelius 10y ago
      Do this on your friends and families computers, and change the world.
  - iainnash 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

return0 10y ago

trivial but handy bookmarklet link for scihub: javascript:window.location='http://sci-hub.bz/'+window.location

x5n1 10y ago

Long live Aaron Swartz

chias 10y ago

I feel a little tingle of excitement seeing my own papers on Sci-Hub. I mean I get that they're trying to index all publications so it's not a "stamp or approval" or anything... but it does mean that people can actually access the knowledge I tried to throw into the world, which was kind of the whole point in doing it. I'd update my academic website to link my papers to their sci-hub URLs if I didn't think I'd catch a world of flak for it.

dougmccune 10y ago
I'm genuinely curious who you think would give you flak. Publishers? Your department faculty? The librarian at your university? Your peers? (reason I'm interested: I'm on the board of Sage and have a board meeting tomorrow where I hope we'll be discussing sci-hub)
- chias 10y ago
  I'm mostly concerned about what my department would do under pressure from publishers and/or the government. Being part of a state university, publicly endorsing illegal actions is unwise on my part. Especially if they undermine the establishment that the school serves.
  - dougmccune 10y ago
    Thanks for the insight. I'm curious to follow it through and try to understand what you think practical repercussions would be. So say you have your CV up online with sci-hub links, and a publisher does somehow complain to the university. Wouldn't the worst that happens be you change it and say sorry? Or do you think there would be more serious consequences? Is being seen as "pro piracy" a black mark that would stay with you somehow?
    - chias 10y ago
      I don't think there would be any real repercussions. But this close to the end, it seems foolish to bet the last six years of my life on a mildly amusing act of civil disobedience. While I have complete faith in my department not being staffed with idiots and zealots, I have no similar faith in our government. Being a state school, that's ultimately who we answer to. The whole Aaron Schwartz debacle evaporated any faith I might have had in our government's ability to deal with this sort of thing like grownups.

wyager 10y ago

Domain names should not, in principle, be subject to the arbitrary edicts of governments. I hope that, in the future, we switch to a decentralised and cryptographically incorruptible system a la Namecoin.

DarkLinkXXXX 10y ago
Being free would also be nice. But of course, we also need a way to disincentive squatting.

thaw13579 10y ago

Maybe this is an opportune time to bring up a related concern. It's crucial that any system for disseminating scientific work be reliable and persist indefinitely. I don't like the current system, but I wonder how this will be achieved otherwise.

DarkLinkXXXX 10y ago
I agree. I don't want papers to dissapear indefinitely due to an IT mistake, and I'm sure there are many researchers that don't save previous papers locally. That, and being able to access cited works is also important.

blue_dinner 10y ago

Just like with music and file sharing, this will not hurt the large corporations. It will only hurt the researchers that depend on these papers for funding and make it more difficult for them to make a living in the future. It will also push companies to keep research more private and proprietary. Why would I spend millions of dollars on research, only to have it freely distributed to everyone, including my potential competitors? I've never witnesses a time where more people fight to give up more and more of their own power and hand it over to governments and large corporations on a silver platter...and then complain when it's all gone.

gradschool 10y ago
Are you aware that unlike musicians, academic researchers don't get paid royalties on their publications? A list of prestigious publications on one's cv leads to funding and job opportunities regardless of whether anyone pays to read them.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  Lots of academics are collecting royalties on books. Typically not large royalties, but they are collecting them.
  - gradschool 10y ago
    Yes, that's a fair point. I was thinking only of journal articles and conference proceedings. One way of making money off textbooks is to be a professor in an institution with a large number of students and make them a requirement for the course. It also helps to make a few small changes every year and call it a new edition, so each year the next class of students has to buy new ones instead of used copies from the previous year's class. I question whether this practice is worth defending.
    - SCHiM 10y ago
      > Yes, that's a fair point. I was thinking only of journal articles and conference proceedings. One way of making money off textbooks is to be a professor in an institution with a large number of students Yeah that behaviour is detestable. Absolutely utterly unethical and everyone who engages in this type of behaviour should take a long look in the mirror and realize that there's an Evil person looking back. I've lost so much money to f*ckers like this and I have no recourse, it makes me so mad I can spit.

chris_wot 10y ago

I wonder if there is a way of distributing a signed file that contains the IP address of sci-hub over a distributed medium? Someone else would just need to write a small script that copied it into the system's host file - but make it generic enough that it works for anything. That would help non-technical users. This would stop courts from going after centralised name servers. There really needs to be a way of decentralising name servers.

DarkLinkXXXX 10y ago
It's possible in principle. Just use public-key cryptography (perhaps the SSL cert of the website), grep and ed. You could have it update once a day from the sites listed, or perhaps create some type of dht backend. P.S. This dht-based P2P dns project might interest you. https://github.com/mwarning/KadNode https://github.com/mwarning/KadNode
- chris_wot 10y ago
  What about distributing it? Is there a way of decentralizing that? I notice there is Tahoe lafs... https://www.tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs https://www.tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs
  - chris_wot 10y ago
    And of course, ipfs. Still trying to get my head around how it actually works!
duaneb 10y ago
Namecoin fits the bill.

grownseed 10y ago

Recently shared this here: http://www.thebookseller.com/news/elsevier-defends-its-value-after-open-access-disputes-328037 http://www.thebookseller.com/news/elsevier-defends-its-value... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11614926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11614926) which I'm guessing is the precursor to this debacle. Reading what Elsevier have to say, you'd think they're either completely delusional (I doubt so), or know full well that they're rapidly becoming irrelevant/abhorred and are adopting a bully position, all the while pretending to be innocent and blameless victims of this situation. Don't count on me to shed a tear when Elsevier go under.

grownseed 10y ago
Just saw Elsevier retweeted this: "Science is better and more accurate when it's inclusive." (https://twitter.com/ElsevierConnect/status/728215525868875780 https://twitter.com/ElsevierConnect/status/72821552586887578...) I realize this is about gender, but I can't help but feel a bit of irony in there...
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  Great observation. They're calling their own BS indirectly. Whoever is involved in SciHub with strong presence on social media should immediately start using that quote to push SciHub. :)

chrismonsanto 10y ago

> Meanwhile, academic pirates continue to flood to Sci-Hub, domain seizure or not. I realize readers of torrentfreak.com have a different relationship with the word "pirate" but-- This is not piracy. You are entitled to read work from Sci-Hub, as your taxes funded the researchers who created the work. We academics want you to read our work, we do not benefit in any way from publisher paywalls. We continue to publish in these venues because it is necessary for career advancement (whether for us, or for our students). Please continue to "pirate" our work, and please spread the word about this problem.

fudged71 10y ago
Is this argument valid internationally? My canadian taxes didn't pay for american research, should I still be able to access those papers?
- squidfood 10y ago
  I'm in the U.S. and enjoy a few Canada-based journals that detail work funded by Canada. Fair trade, eh?
- uxp 10y ago
  Sure. Same way that if you were to drive down for a weekend and not pay taxes on the roads you specifically used across the border. Until thousands of Canadians come down every weekend just so they can use American roads and then go back home to fill up on gas, we won't worry about it.
- chrismonsanto 10y ago
  Researchers regularly make use of work from other countries, the scientific community is international. Even if one could make an argument for not allowing Canadians to access US research without payment, it doesn't follow that Elsevier and friends are the ones who should be paid. Research done by government employees is legally required to be public domain. I see no reason we shouldn't extend that to researchers who take government funding.
return0 10y ago

cessor 10y ago

"We wish to set back society, because we want to make more money". I use Sci-Hub all the time. I can access all papers via my library subscriptions so I actually DO have paid access to everything, but searching with and authenticating against my university library's services is slow and tedious and not feasible if I want to download many papers quickly.

return0 10y ago
Plus multiple times sciencedirect was down for me.

gherkin0 10y ago

How big is the sci-hub database? Are there full/partial mirrors published anywhere?

DarkLinkXXXX 10y ago
We can see here, over 50mil papers. http://libgen.io/scimag/repository_torrent_notforall/ http://libgen.io/scimag/repository_torrent_notforall/ As you can see here, they have three mirrors. One Moscow, one Ocean(ia?), and one Cyber(ia?). Libgen also has a mirror. As for BookSC, they seem to be quite a bit out of date, or something.

joelthelion 10y ago

Are people working on a better system to replace DNS? This little game is quickly becoming tiring.

dest 10y ago
namecoin, Tor adresses...
ashitlerferad 10y ago
GNUnet has the GNU name system: https://www.gnunet.org/gns https://www.gnunet.org/gns
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  Tks for tip. Never heard of it.

mnl 10y ago

Yet again, please don't mention other sites here or in reddit etc. Being in the spotlight is not good for them. What they are doing is morally fine in my book, but infringes the law and you are contributing to their demise. Keep it low profile, the more you blab about them the sooner they are gone. And until the next platform makes it -if it does, you can't guarantee it will- it is going to cause a lot of damage to many careers out there, because there are many people that have no choice but this one. If this is a war, it is a war of attrition, it can't be won by pointing out the targets.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

michakirschbaum 10y ago

Looking forward to watching the Streisand Effect play out.

plg 10y ago

why not set it up as a tor hidden service?

cloudjacker 10y ago

yeah but where's the torrent?

jheriko 10y ago

As much as I completely support freedom of information there is a problem with not respecting the law that seems to be growing... I might disagree with the law. I might break it intentionally, but I do my due diligence and do it knowingly. When i get caught I hold up my hands and face the consequences because I entered into that knowingly. I have actually done this irl. This is why I have no respect for this, or for Uber, Aaron Schwartz or this entire ridiculous movement of subversion instead of facing up to the challenge and taking it extremely seriously and tackling it up front and openly with some pride and courage. I'm glad people are fighting to keep this alive anyway. That imo is part of the right approach, to defeat the law by showing its futility in the face of reality when it is very far into the wrong. But ffs, don't hide from what you have done like some kind of child. Face up to your responsiblity and take it on the chin... and let people be angry about that, because that is an actual, serious wrong. "Words are wind."

alwaysdownvoted 10y ago

echo "93.174.95.27 elsevier.com" >> /etc/hosts http://elsevier.com/scimag http://elsevier.com/scimag