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,,I do not, however, contribute anything to the system; I free-ride off their criminality'' The writer has to constatly remind me that running the proxy is a c

,,I do not, however, contribute anything to the system; I free-ride off their criminality'' The writer has to constatly remind me that running the proxy is a crime, but using it - even if she knows that it's not the legitimate way to get the information- is not. This may be true, still I don't like the tone, as clearly sci-hub is providing the huge value to people, not her. I wouldn't be surprised if some life saving drugs would be developed and used in practice faster because of sci-hub.

logicallee 7y ago
I don't use sci-hub, but the framing "Sci-Hub users cost ASA journals thousands of downloads" presumes something: it presumes that without sci-hub, ASA journals would have thousands of more downloads. This could very well be false: without sci-hub, people might instead use arxiv and the like; perhaps sci-hub brings journals thousands of downloads they would not have if sci-hub didn't exist. As I don't use it I can't say if this might be accurate, though.
- 317070 7y ago
  Or, people might not have published to ASA journals if their papers would not have been easily accessible from sci-hub.
- crispinb 7y ago
  I use it a fair bit for a variety of purposes. Without Sci-Hub, given the astonishingly high pricing usually involved I certainly wouldn't be paying for the articles. I'd be managing without as best I can. Sci-Hub doesn't give me information for free I'd otherwise have to pay for - rather it provides information I'd otherwise have little access to.
- tudorw 7y ago
  We went through this with MP3, record industry claimed every download was costing them money, that is was the end of the world as we know it, they would wither and die without copyright protection, while at the same time, more people were listening to more music, and look where we are now...
  - piracyadvocate 7y ago
    Didn't iTunes store used to be DRM free? (I never actually had any apple device so I'm not sure)
    - Macha 7y ago
      Other way around - it used to have DRM and removed it a few years in
- piracyadvocate 7y ago
  >This could very well be false: without sci-hub, people might instead use arxiv and the like; perhaps sci-hub brings journals thousands of downloads they would not have if sci-hub didn't exist. There was that study in EU that said piracy actually helped the game industry. There is also what the author was commenting, sci-hub is easier to use than the legal alternative. We go tour researchers stuck in bureaucracies, to access papers funded by taxpayers! As Gabe Newel said, to fight piracy, you provide a better service (Steam was the biggest hit to game piracy, and so was Netflix for series and movies), instead of that, what we see is more control/bureaucracy being added. edit: https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/22/eu-suppressed-study-piracy-no-sales-impact/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/22/eu-suppressed-study-pira... it's an old study (2013), but I doubt the situation got worse. In videogame land the greatest example is The Witcher 3, easiest game to pirate, has it was distributed without DRM, you could just copy your friends installer. It was still on the top of steam most played single player game(which requires the key to be unique), won a lot of awards, and got so much exposure that netflix has released a TV show...
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    HN is getting novelty usernames now? That was a bit, um, unsettling.
    - piracyadvocate 7y ago
      Well, I didn't want to associate pro-piracy views with my main account. That account should be for tech discussion only, without politics. Identity on the internet is forever.
  - catalogia 7y ago
    It's hard to imagine how a legal service could be better than Sci-hub. You could make it as good as sci-hub, but how could you make it easier than "paste DOI -> PDF is downloaded"? Steam beats video game piracy because video game piracy requires shit like having a torrent client or having a friend who has a copy already. Video game piracy was never as easy as sci-hub.
- xiphias2 7y ago
  Of course you're right, but the article acnowledges that at some point. I'm not a researcher, but download lots of articles just as general curiousity. I definitely wouldn't have $30 for each download, as I'm not profiting of it at all.
- Terretta 7y ago
  Requesting a song from a DJ so you can tape it from the radio for free costs record labels millions!
ailideex 7y ago
To be frank when people using "..., and that’s OK" they pretty much lost me. It implies the person thinks their value judgement on the matter is somehow universal - which it just is not. I use sci-hub - others can decide for themselves to use it - but I'm not going to say others should think it is okay or not okay if I use it - the value judgements of most other people regarding my actions is not something that I care about a lot.
_Nat_ 7y ago
> I wouldn't be surprised if some life saving drugs would be developed and used in practice faster because of sci-hub. Seems like it'd be difficult to precisely estimate the effect of open literature on advancing education, research, and development efforts. Back when I was a student, we had access to a lot of journals -- but not all of them. And to use them, we had to connect through a laggy VPN to the university, as we often traveled; sometimes it was down. And then when we worked with industrial partners, we couldn't just email them relevant papers as that'd have been illegal. And we couldn't even just email each other papers, as I think the terms-of-use required us to independently download articles. And, again, that was with university subscriptions! Rising students and professionals who go into industry typically can't access articles at all. Sure, if they really need a specific paper they can try to find a way, but that's a horribly inefficient way to do research; to be effective, a researcher really needs to be able to browse through the literature freely, reading lots of papers without being distracted by technical barriers. Given that the current system slows down everyone, it's hurting all of us. All of science, technology, engineering, medicine, whatever -- it's all less than what it could've been because we're being held back. But how do we quantify the on-going harm? How can we guess what sorts of inventions weren't made because researchers didn't have access or were fighting with a buggy VPN? How do we guess at how much education's being held back by students not knowing how to access the literature before college? What about all the damage from working professionals not being able to browse the literature related to their field? Anyway, yeah, the article's constant references to Sci-Hub, as though it's somehow criminal, were definitely jarring. Sci-Hub feels like it should be legal based on the same sorts of arguments that make self-defense or providing emergency assistance legal.
wavepruner 7y ago
Sci-Hub helped me identify the appropriate life-saving drug for my disabling illness. I could barely sit up and now I'm walking around. It's going through FDA approval very slowly, so I just buy it from a manufacturer from China.

logicallee 7y ago

I don't use sci-hub, but the framing "Sci-Hub users cost ASA journals thousands of downloads" presumes something: it presumes that without sci-hub, ASA journals would have thousands of more downloads. This could very well be false: without sci-hub, people might instead use arxiv and the like; perhaps sci-hub brings journals thousands of downloads they would not have if sci-hub didn't exist. As I don't use it I can't say if this might be accurate, though.

317070 7y ago
Or, people might not have published to ASA journals if their papers would not have been easily accessible from sci-hub.
crispinb 7y ago
I use it a fair bit for a variety of purposes. Without Sci-Hub, given the astonishingly high pricing usually involved I certainly wouldn't be paying for the articles. I'd be managing without as best I can. Sci-Hub doesn't give me information for free I'd otherwise have to pay for - rather it provides information I'd otherwise have little access to.
tudorw 7y ago
We went through this with MP3, record industry claimed every download was costing them money, that is was the end of the world as we know it, they would wither and die without copyright protection, while at the same time, more people were listening to more music, and look where we are now...
- piracyadvocate 7y ago
  Didn't iTunes store used to be DRM free? (I never actually had any apple device so I'm not sure)
  - Macha 7y ago
    Other way around - it used to have DRM and removed it a few years in
piracyadvocate 7y ago
>This could very well be false: without sci-hub, people might instead use arxiv and the like; perhaps sci-hub brings journals thousands of downloads they would not have if sci-hub didn't exist. There was that study in EU that said piracy actually helped the game industry. There is also what the author was commenting, sci-hub is easier to use than the legal alternative. We go tour researchers stuck in bureaucracies, to access papers funded by taxpayers! As Gabe Newel said, to fight piracy, you provide a better service (Steam was the biggest hit to game piracy, and so was Netflix for series and movies), instead of that, what we see is more control/bureaucracy being added. edit: https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/22/eu-suppressed-study-piracy-no-sales-impact/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/22/eu-suppressed-study-pira... it's an old study (2013), but I doubt the situation got worse. In videogame land the greatest example is The Witcher 3, easiest game to pirate, has it was distributed without DRM, you could just copy your friends installer. It was still on the top of steam most played single player game(which requires the key to be unique), won a lot of awards, and got so much exposure that netflix has released a TV show...
- zozbot234 7y ago
  HN is getting novelty usernames now? That was a bit, um, unsettling.
  - piracyadvocate 7y ago
    Well, I didn't want to associate pro-piracy views with my main account. That account should be for tech discussion only, without politics. Identity on the internet is forever.
- catalogia 7y ago
  It's hard to imagine how a legal service could be better than Sci-hub. You could make it as good as sci-hub, but how could you make it easier than "paste DOI -> PDF is downloaded"? Steam beats video game piracy because video game piracy requires shit like having a torrent client or having a friend who has a copy already. Video game piracy was never as easy as sci-hub.
xiphias2 7y ago
Of course you're right, but the article acnowledges that at some point. I'm not a researcher, but download lots of articles just as general curiousity. I definitely wouldn't have $30 for each download, as I'm not profiting of it at all.
Terretta 7y ago
Requesting a song from a DJ so you can tape it from the radio for free costs record labels millions!

ailideex 7y ago

To be frank when people using "..., and that’s OK" they pretty much lost me. It implies the person thinks their value judgement on the matter is somehow universal - which it just is not. I use sci-hub - others can decide for themselves to use it - but I'm not going to say others should think it is okay or not okay if I use it - the value judgements of most other people regarding my actions is not something that I care about a lot.

_Nat_ 7y ago

> I wouldn't be surprised if some life saving drugs would be developed and used in practice faster because of sci-hub. Seems like it'd be difficult to precisely estimate the effect of open literature on advancing education, research, and development efforts. Back when I was a student, we had access to a lot of journals -- but not all of them. And to use them, we had to connect through a laggy VPN to the university, as we often traveled; sometimes it was down. And then when we worked with industrial partners, we couldn't just email them relevant papers as that'd have been illegal. And we couldn't even just email each other papers, as I think the terms-of-use required us to independently download articles. And, again, that was with university subscriptions! Rising students and professionals who go into industry typically can't access articles at all. Sure, if they really need a specific paper they can try to find a way, but that's a horribly inefficient way to do research; to be effective, a researcher really needs to be able to browse through the literature freely, reading lots of papers without being distracted by technical barriers. Given that the current system slows down everyone, it's hurting all of us. All of science, technology, engineering, medicine, whatever -- it's all less than what it could've been because we're being held back. But how do we quantify the on-going harm? How can we guess what sorts of inventions weren't made because researchers didn't have access or were fighting with a buggy VPN? How do we guess at how much education's being held back by students not knowing how to access the literature before college? What about all the damage from working professionals not being able to browse the literature related to their field? Anyway, yeah, the article's constant references to Sci-Hub, as though it's somehow criminal, were definitely jarring. Sci-Hub feels like it should be legal based on the same sorts of arguments that make self-defense or providing emergency assistance legal.

wavepruner 7y ago

Sci-Hub helped me identify the appropriate life-saving drug for my disabling illness. I could barely sit up and now I'm walking around. It's going through FDA approval very slowly, so I just buy it from a manufacturer from China.