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Sci-Hub's user flow is so ridiculously friendly, that I'd often use it even when I have credentials to some obscure authorization network. This is true even for

by z2 8y ago

Sci-Hub's user flow is so ridiculously friendly, that I'd often use it even when I have credentials to some obscure authorization network. This is true even for the free SSRN which started requiring logging in around the time Elsevier bought them. Gabe Newell of Valve asserted something very similar: > "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said. "If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."

tanderson92 8y ago
The following hack makes it even more friendly, removing the annoying sci-hub sidebar so you can view it purely as a PDF. https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/28331-remove-annoying-boxes-from-sci-hub https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/28331-remove-annoying-boxe...
tschwimmer 8y ago
While I agree that access is a problem, I don't know how much I believe Gaben's comment anymore. Sites like Kinguin and G2A are doing very healthy business by selling grey market keys for mild to significant discounts to Steam. Their user experience sucks (like actively unethically user hostile bad). Search is horrible. Pricing is nontransparent, aggressive spammy upselling is rampant. The checkout system makes it feel like your credit card information is being posted directly to the dark web. You have to be careful to buy a key that matches the region where you live. Literally the only thing they have going for them is price. I'd guess those sites are two orders of magnitude smaller than Steam, but a quick search reveals G2A has 700 employees and 16 million customers, so they can't be doing too bad. If access truly was the problem than these sites wouldn't exist.
amelius 8y ago
> "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said. I don't know. Paying $25 or $50 for an article, just to see if it contains something useful is a lot ... And with the realization that the research was funded by tax dollars, that price becomes absurd.
- norswap 8y ago
  Yeah, in the Steam age the demos have been mostly killed. I guess "Let's Plays" have replaced them? Personally, I still value getting my hands on the beast myself.
  - joshvm 8y ago
    Steam will at least automatically refund a purchase within 14 days if the play time is less than 2 hours. As far as I know you can't get a refund if you don't like an article, but I may be mistaken. If you had that option, paying for a journal article might be slightly more palatable. The quickest legal way to get a copy of a paper that isn't already accessible as a pre-print is to email the author(s). Usually they don't mind. Hint: email the student, not the prof and you're more likely to get a reply. You can also do this via ResearchGate.

by z2 8y ago

tanderson92 8y ago

The following hack makes it even more friendly, removing the annoying sci-hub sidebar so you can view it purely as a PDF. https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/28331-remove-annoying-boxes-from-sci-hub https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/28331-remove-annoying-boxe...

tschwimmer 8y ago

While I agree that access is a problem, I don't know how much I believe Gaben's comment anymore. Sites like Kinguin and G2A are doing very healthy business by selling grey market keys for mild to significant discounts to Steam. Their user experience sucks (like actively unethically user hostile bad). Search is horrible. Pricing is nontransparent, aggressive spammy upselling is rampant. The checkout system makes it feel like your credit card information is being posted directly to the dark web. You have to be careful to buy a key that matches the region where you live. Literally the only thing they have going for them is price. I'd guess those sites are two orders of magnitude smaller than Steam, but a quick search reveals G2A has 700 employees and 16 million customers, so they can't be doing too bad. If access truly was the problem than these sites wouldn't exist.

amelius 8y ago

> "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said. I don't know. Paying $25 or $50 for an article, just to see if it contains something useful is a lot ... And with the realization that the research was funded by tax dollars, that price becomes absurd.

norswap 8y ago
Yeah, in the Steam age the demos have been mostly killed. I guess "Let's Plays" have replaced them? Personally, I still value getting my hands on the beast myself.
- joshvm 8y ago
  Steam will at least automatically refund a purchase within 14 days if the play time is less than 2 hours. As far as I know you can't get a refund if you don't like an article, but I may be mistaken. If you had that option, paying for a journal article might be slightly more palatable. The quickest legal way to get a copy of a paper that isn't already accessible as a pre-print is to email the author(s). Usually they don't mind. Hint: email the student, not the prof and you're more likely to get a reply. You can also do this via ResearchGate.