17 ms·
Publisher Gets Carte Blanche to Seize New Sci-Hub Domains
- sterlind 9y agoI run a rare disease wiki, which makes extensive use of sci-hub links to bypass journal article paywalls. Patients (including myself) can't otherwise access research on their own conditions. How should I keep my links working? Should I link to stable IP addresses? Mirror papers to IPFS? Link to the onion address, via a public tor gateway? Host my own DNS server to point at sci-hub? Bonus points for keeping https cert validation working!
- Y_Y 9y agoHost the documents yourself?
- acover 9y agoFrom the article it sounds like both .onion and .is domains are safe for the time being. The .is domain should be easier to use.
- ArchReaper 9y ago>How should I keep my links working? Build functionality that lets you mass-update all scihub links across your site, and manually update it whenever a domain goes down Or link to .onion versions (and a link to TOR) Or stop linking
- sincerely 9y agoMight be worth linking to a clearnet service that loads .onion sites, since this isn't a very privacy-conscious usecase and that would probably have a higher success rate than asking people to download a new internet browser
- klez 9y ago> since this isn't a very privacy-conscious usecase Doing research on you own medical condition is not something you may want to keep private? Or are you talking about something else and I'm misreading your post?
- sincerely 9y agoSorry for the late response. I agree that it's something that you may want to keep private but is not something you necessarily want to or even can hide from the government (compared to other .onion use cases where the advice is categorically "do NOT use a clearnet gateway, you will be arrested and convicted", like buying drugs).
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- psychometry 9y agohttps://whereisscihub.now.sh/ https://whereisscihub.now.sh/ Someone posted this on HN a while back.
- Vinnl 9y agoNote also that you can use it just like regular Sci-Hub, i.e. you can append a paywalled link to https://whereisscihub.now.sh/go/ https://whereisscihub.now.sh/go/ to be redirected to the unpaywalled version. Speaking of Unpaywall: that's actually the name of a browser extension that can give you legal open access versions of paywalled articles. See https://unpaywall.org/ https://unpaywall.org/
- ImaCake 9y ago>Patients (including myself) can't otherwise access research on their own conditions. This is one of the best arguments for true open access. Rare disease research is often more likely to be hidden behind a paywall because of the limited number of niche journals that will publish this research.
- slig 9y agoRewrite all the external links before displaying them to something like: /redir?url=http://.. http://... (using a filter or by manually creating a plugin on your Wiki software) then on your /redir endpoint you can redirect to the proper URL if it changes.
- StavrosK 9y agoI think mirroring things to IPFS is a perfect use case for this. Especially with IPFS companion[1], it's really easy for visitors to access your content. [1]: https://blog.ipfs.io/35-ipfs-companion-2-2-0/ https://blog.ipfs.io/35-ipfs-companion-2-2-0/
- hokus 9y agoYou should do all of the above. Make the links into a manual redirect/landing page that offers links to the IP, the onion addresses, a public tor gateway, a page describing how to find sci-hub, [perhaps] also make your "own" torrents, dumb links to search engines (possibly with .pdf behind the search query) AND to make it really nice also link to the services that sell the document.
- akvadrako 9y agoOnion links are in general not very stable, and the other option is basically running your own cache/proxy. But if you just want access, http://paperdownloader.cf http://paperdownloader.cf works.
- walterbell 9y ago*> Several service providers are not receptive to US Court orders. One example is Iceland’s domain registry ISNIC and indeed, at the time of writing, Sci-Hub.is is still widely available. Why is ISNIC different?
- ArchReaper 9y agoBecause not every country/company will let the US legal system steamroll people. They have no legal obligation to, so it's up to their discretion.
- guelo 9y agoI think one of the biggest factors is that they run their own registration. A lot of the little countries outsource their registration to american companies such as verisign. ISNIC says they will only take down a domain on order of an Icelandic court.
- walterbell 9y agoWhat kind of domains have Icelandic courts requested to be taken down?
- Geimfari 9y agoI haven't been able to find any instances of the courts requesting take-downs. But the registry has removed some ISIS domains on their own accord.
- computerfriend 9y agoISIS must be peeved they can't get the cute is.is URL.
- zaarn 9y agoI'd buy that domain and run something fun on it. No idea what but I'm sure there is a list somewhere. But that would probably not end well for me. Or anyone associated with that domain.
- dooglius 9y agoWe ought to have some kind of DNS alternative that doesn’t allow this sort of thing to happen.
- dredmorbius 9y agoRun your own. https://www.reddit.com/r/Scholar/comments/7m3uin/meta_if_you_cant_remember_what_domains_scihub_is/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Scholar/comments/7m3uin/meta_if_you...
- jrowley 9y agoI would just edit my hosts file for those IPs, but cool hack!
- dredmorbius 9y agoYou can stil use the generator for that.
- zokier 9y agoI was half expecting to see something related to alt DNS roots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root That is what I'd call running your own DNS :)
- LeoPanthera 9y agoThey could just operate a .onion to work around the whole thing. I think they already do?
- darawk 9y agoI'm sure they do. But we really need a more user friendly secure, decentralized DNS alternative. I know there was some noise in the Ethereum community about an ENS domain name system. Is anything likely to come of that?
- 9y ago
- philip1209 9y agoWhat would happen if they started writing the articles to a blockchain? It would be functionally impossible to remove, right?
- maxerickson 9y agoThe durability would depend on how many people cared to host that particular blockchain. For a popular blockchain like teh bitcoin, it would cost quite a lot to introduce much data.
- prepend 9y agoAt 30 satoshi per byte, 5 gigs would be about 50 bitcoins. At $7, that’s only$350k right? That’s a pretty awesome Kickstarter project.
- iggg 9y agoNamecoin
- Dylan16807 9y agoIf you start a blockchain made of copyright violation, it's going to be legally about the same as a torrent, and you'll get hit for connecting at all.
- lovetrump 9y agoWhat if all servers would hold some random bits and no one would have any whole file (only the clients would be getting whole files)
- dredmorbius 9y agoIf you can't remember what domain(s) Sci-Hub is on this week, why not make it all of them? https://www.reddit.com/r/Scholar/comments/7m3uin/meta_if_you_cant_remember_what_domains_scihub_is/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Scholar/comments/7m3uin/meta_if_you...
- rdl 9y agoSci-Hub: the Internet’s second most censored publication. (And altogether easier to support morally, ethically, aesthetically than the first one.) Boycotting ACS seems like a nice idea, but it would be challenging for professional chemists.
- arkades 9y agoWait, what’s the first?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- rdl 9y agoDaily Stormer, which has gone through 20+ domains in the past 18 months, was the first site to get kicked off Cloudflare for content/no court order, constant attacks on hosting facilities, etc.
- StavrosK 9y agoSciHub isn't the second, CloudFlare is obeying a court order on this one. The DS incident was one where they didn't have a warrant.
- rdl 9y agoYes, but the “any domain with sci-hub in it can be taken down without further legal action” is not standard for actions against domains; usually it is seizure or other action against specific domains. Cloudflare isn’t a monopoly/chokepoint to the extent that actions against domain registries (via registrars) are.
- 220V_USKettle 9y agoTaken down or siezed?
- 9y ago
- misterbowfinger 9y agoSo confused. DNS registrars can be mandated to reject domain ownership? What about DNS registrars outside of the US? Also..... at some point we could just publish a list of IP's if we care enough, right? Although that's less than ideal.
- prepend 9y agoHow would a Wikipedia DNS work? It seems like this would be a useful service as people move toward some weird morality-based instead of law-based way of living life. This is a topic that I want to see if transhumanists have researched as this becomes really important post-singularity.
- rorykoehler 9y agoIt would lead to filter bubbles.
- Endy 9y agoSome transhumanists have done thought experiments and research on it, and I would say that the most digestible version of the "morality-as-law" system is in the Eclipse Phase RPG.
- zaarn 9y agoLots of non-US TLDs run over US-based registrars. There are some, like Iceland, which run their own registrar and aren't connected to the US. Which means they don't care what the US says until an Icelandic court agrees.
- woodandsteel 9y agoCould the articles be hosted on ipfs? I say that because one of ipfs's stated goals is overcoming censorship.
- StavrosK 9y agoThey could. It's a bit inconvenient to pin things now (you can't just say "I want to pin 5 GB of SciHub") and IPFS is slow to resolve new content, but it should work very acceptably.
- shliachtx 9y agoI'm not sure if this would work, but what about hosting a node that you can manually add to your bootstrap list? Would that make getting the content quicker? Edit: Oh, amd why couldn't I just pin the top node of the dag recursively? Wouldn't that basically do what you want?
- StavrosK 9y ago> what about hosting a node that you can manually add to your bootstrap list? I tried that and it didn't help :/ I think there's a bug in fetching content, because I was requesting the files from a node connected directly to mine (which I knew had the files) but still could not retrieve them. Hopefully 0.4.14 will work a bit better. Wouldn't pinning the top node of the DAG pin everything? How would you restrict it to X GB?
- otakucode 9y agoIt's interesting that this sort of thing is happening just as more and more research is piling up showing that the old peer review publishing model is less effective in every possible way than open publishing on the Internet. Errors get caught faster without journals involved. Corrections are published faster without journals involved. Bad science doesn't stick around as long without journals involved. They're just not a thing we need any more. And this is where we will find out how they actually feel about the notion that the thing which provides the better value should win in the market.
- prepend 9y agoCan you get grant funding without them?
- otakucode 9y agoI don't know enough about grant funding to hazard a real guess. That is an interesting issue, though. I presume that grant committees are not typically staffed by people well-versed in the subject area? Would they not be capable of recognizing a global acceptance of an applicants prior work without a fallible journal citation? I know that in many fields the amount of other work which cites a given publication is a very important factor, perhaps that would play a role? What position would it put journals in if they were reduced to providing vetting for grant committees? If instead of being arbiters of scientific validity, which they are poorer at than open publishing, they simply become some sort of thing similar to ratings agencies that provide parents with an unreliable best-effort guide to content acceptability without needing to actually learn about the thing in detail?
- prepend 9y agoFor the US at least, grant committees are almost always staffed by people with subject area expertise. For NIH, there are two levels of SME- one non gov and one gov.
- zokier 9y agoWhile I think the change Sci-Hub is driving towards more open access is a good thing, I do also feel like Sci-Hub is destined to be the martyr here. From the big picture this is more just the pieces going through the almost inevitable (in some form) motions that will get us hopefully ultimately to better future (with legitimate open-access), but that won't be helping Sci-Hub whose position from a purely legal perspective pretty clearly in the "wrong" side.
- prepend 9y agoSo was MLK and people made the same argument and (horribly and sadly) he was. Obviously, copyright on publicly funded research isn’t the same priority as civil rights in the US, but hopefully we learned enough so we don’t make more martyrs for just causes. The “dumb law is illegal, therefore let’s follow it anyway” is not something I agree with by default. There are quite a few laws that need fixing.
- DoofusOfDeath 9y agoI think a problem with that mentality is that it's antidemocratic. Basically you're saying that potentially the only laws you'll recognize are those with which you agree. If other citizens were to also adopt that policy, we'd literally have anarchy.
- js8 9y ago> I think a problem with that mentality is that it's antidemocratic. It is only antidemocratic if you have democracy. Can you really put a question "should the scientific research be published for free" to a popular vote in your country?
- spacemanmatt 9y agoHave you met our national leadership lately? America is undemocratic.
- LyndsySimon 9y agoFrom the standpoint of American government it was never intended to be a democracy. "Democracy" was feared by the Founders, who saw it as mob rule. As for picking and choosing what laws one recognizes as legitimated, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr put it better than I can: > One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all." --- > If other citizens were to also adopt that policy, we'd literally have anarchy. My first response to this is that we already follow this policy. Have you ever exceeded the speed limit? Have you ever consumed an illegal substance? Have you ever fixed something in your home that requires a permit without obtaining one? The simple fact of the matter is that everyone violates the law, every day, consciously or not. My second response is to question whether or not this form of anarchy, where each individual is responsible for their own actions and communities are responsible for establishing and enforces their own standards of behavior through social pressure, is a bad thing at all. I don't believe it is.
- kevin_b_er 9y agoIs the article itself subject to the judge's prior restraint on the basis on mentioning a known working website for sci-hub?
- kevin_b_er 9y agoFurther, does this discussion page itself "facilitate access" by virtue of people mentioning a working sci-hub website? What limits are there to the gag order? How much rights do you have left to speak of sci-hub online? Do you have any?
- JumpCrisscross 9y agoWikipedia’s Sci-Hub entry guides one to live addresses [1]. Would this ruling censor Wikipedia? Also, who is defending Sci-Hub? Is there anyone who would be in a position to challenge or appeal this ruling? Or do we have to wait for the ACS to demand censorship from a registrar with balls? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub
- DmenshunlAnlsis 9y agoA lot of people could appeal the ruling, including the Wikimedia foundation if they were being forced to remove those links. I’m not sure, but my impression of this ruling is that it would probably be overturned on appeal.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoThat sounds like something up the EFF's park, doesn't it?
- Vinnl 9y agoI wonder that as well - I recently made https://whereisscihub.now.sh https://whereisscihub.now.sh, which parses the Wikidata API to always link to an available version of Sci-Hub. Technically, it just transform content from one location to a different format, but yeah... It might stop working if Wikimedia would be forced to remove their links. Anyway, Alexandra Albakyan (who is behind Sci-Hub) is unlikely to defend it with anything else than written statements, given that she's from Kazakhstan or Russia and is unlikely to come to the US given several earlier injunctions against Sci-Hub.
- Pyxl101 9y agoDoes SciHub need an actual domain name? Could they provide their website on a well-known IP address, kind of like CloudFlare's 1.1.1.1 DNS? Other people could build websites that redirect to or reference this known IP address. (Or can IP addresses be seized too? I assume not, or else I'd expect the actual SciHub website to be shut down, not just the DNS names pointing to it.) Edit: It looks like SciHub is in fact available on certain IP addresses. The following website lists a few of them: https://whereisscihub.now.sh/ https://whereisscihub.now.sh/ - one example is http://80.82.77.83 http://80.82.77.83
- ChuckMcM 9y agoDistributed detached root DNS anyone? A twitter bot that returns IP addresses to #icanhazscience ? I don't think they can prevent this.
- sitkack 9y agoWould it help to move IPV6 only?
- ChuckMcM 9y agoThat doesn't change the rendezvous problem where people have a name or a mnemonic and they want the IP address. Although, if you could get a "memorable" IPV6 address then you might be able to finesse it. Of course people can black hole and IP address as well which makes it challenging, so perhaps a couple of hundred IPV6 prefixes with rotating addresses.
- intended 9y agoAnd also reminds people that the court orders needed to be handled in court. The *AAs won in court and had the mechanisms of state power bent to their needs.
- Kadin 9y agoAnother comparatively difficult-to-block option is a bookmarklet that runs some JS to retrieve the latest IP address from some server somewhere. I don't really want to switch to somebody's random DNS servers to use SciHub, but dragging a bookmarklet to your browser toolbar is pretty easy.
- colejohnson66 9y agoNot my website, but: https://whereisscihub.now.sh https://whereisscihub.now.sh
- cdcox 9y agoI'm actually surprised this whole suit is being pursued by a professional society. Closed publications seem to be out of line with the interest of their members. Unless the society makes substantial money from their publications, which is unlikely[0], it's hard to see what the motivation of this organization would be and why the members of the society haven't loudly complained against it. I'd really expect a suit from this to come from Elseiver or NPG. [0] From talking to a few representives of sceintific societies it sounds like they usually produce thier journals at or around cost.
- adventured 9y agoCartels often like to protect their elite or scarce stature. Even if one has an elevated respect for the type of people that belong to a given society (eg scientists or researchers), they're going to likely more often than not be no better than doctors or plumbers or any other professionals when it comes to being human: ie they will act in their perceived self-interest to put up barriers that benefit their position. I think farmers are remarkable people, broadly speaking. They feed us all. Who deserves more gratitude than people that do that, right? Well, farmers love their tariffs and protectionism. They lobby like crazy for it all around the world. Nearly everyone wants artificial protection when they can get it. Nobody is confused when labor unions do the exact same thing. This is all about restricting a resource, restricting distribution, tightly controlling it for the supposed benefit of the members (often at the expense of non-members). Controlling prestige via distribution, etc. is one way to control stature and prevent dilution. Scientists & common researchers often don't get paid super well, one of the things they do have is acquired prestige. Restricted publication/distribution is a way to control who gets to be prestigious or not.
- Eridrus 9y agoIt seems like ACS publishes C&EN which comes free with a membership, so is probably a draw for people becoming members, which is probably(?) where most of their revenue comes from; they could reasonably see Sci-Hub as a threat to their membership revenue.
- lvs 9y ago
- JumpCrisscross 9y agoYou can contact the plaintiff’s Board of Directors by calling (800) 227-5558 or sending an e-mail to secretary@acs.org [1]. Here is a list of their Board of Directors: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/about/governance/board/board-of-directors-images.html https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/about/governance/board/bo... . See a person or organisation you know? Let them know your thoughts about this. [1] https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/about/governance/board/contact.html https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/about/governance/board/co...
- jdkram 9y agoSci-Hub bot on Telegram is still up: https://t.me/scihubot https://t.me/scihubot
- dman 9y agoI really wish the publishers got together and started a netflix like service for journals. I would gladly pay to use such a service per month.
- posterboy 9y agoyou are mistakenly believing netflix had an extensive up-to-dat3 catalog. They do not, in comparison there are many netflix-like distributors of science papers. Google Scholar, sci hup and the like bind those together.
- dman 9y agoAny pointers for an aggregator that has acm/springer/ieee?
- dayaz36 9y agoDoes a blockchain alternative to sci-hub exist yet?
- akx 9y agoBlockchains aren't useful for storing large amounts of data, so this probably won't happen. Blockchain as a distributed database + IPFS maybe.
- LyndsySimon 9y agoBlockchains can be good for storing links to large amounts of data, but that doesn't directly solve the fundamental problem here. Storj[1], as I understand it, is an attempt at decentralized storage of large amounts of data. I'm curious if it could be used to host papers in a way that's difficult or impossible to censor? 1: storj.io
- arca_vorago 9y agoThe publishers are an enemy of a free Web, and we mus not let them encroach upon our territory without repercussions, or else the next thing we know the Web will look like cable TV.