4 ms·

>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

>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.
- edraferi 7y ago
  Just make it _as good_. Add legitimacy at the same level of convenience and you win.
  - sitkack 7y ago
    I'd pay $10 a month if addition to pasting a doi -> pdf, that I could also search backward and forward along citations. I'd love to be able to download a paper and everything it references.
    - DennisP 7y ago
      Iirc that's pretty much why TBL invented the web, so you could click on references in scientific papers. It'd be nice if we could actually do that.
    - CrazyStat 7y ago
      I'd probably be willing to pay $30/month for that. Of course they would have to actually have all or most of those backward and forward references available.
- damnyou 7y ago
  As other commenters have responded, being able to navigate the DAG of citations would be a nice value add.
Nasrudith 7y ago
I think that the existing journals will always lose this unlikely publishers. The publishers at least contribute to the content which people appreciate. The journals are only parasitic. Plus we shouldn't pay the paper publishers, although harmless for some fields in others that would make the peverse incentives /even worse/ as it encourages what the audience wants to hear.

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.

edraferi 7y ago
Just make it _as good_. Add legitimacy at the same level of convenience and you win.
- sitkack 7y ago
  I'd pay $10 a month if addition to pasting a doi -> pdf, that I could also search backward and forward along citations. I'd love to be able to download a paper and everything it references.
  - DennisP 7y ago
    Iirc that's pretty much why TBL invented the web, so you could click on references in scientific papers. It'd be nice if we could actually do that.
  - CrazyStat 7y ago
    I'd probably be willing to pay $30/month for that. Of course they would have to actually have all or most of those backward and forward references available.
damnyou 7y ago
As other commenters have responded, being able to navigate the DAG of citations would be a nice value add.

Nasrudith 7y ago

I think that the existing journals will always lose this unlikely publishers. The publishers at least contribute to the content which people appreciate. The journals are only parasitic. Plus we shouldn't pay the paper publishers, although harmless for some fields in others that would make the peverse incentives /even worse/ as it encourages what the audience wants to hear.