5 ms·

Beyond those institutions that have a financial interest in this. What would be the motivation for someone like twitter to ban scihub?

BrawnLongHaul 6y ago
We can only guess their motivations and who pulls their (Twitter's) strings behind the scenes. I am not sure that most of us here will ever find out.
- llcoolv 6y ago
  And even if we do, we will never know for sure.
  - balozi 6y ago
    And even if we knew, we can never talk about it.
- zerkten 6y ago
  > We can only guess their motivations I don't understand this perspective, but I guess my own is built from experience. We can never know exactly what Twitter discussed internally before taking this action, but there is lots of external evidence and signals as to what happened. It's unlikely to be different from the action taken by most other corporations with legal teams. Small organizations with outside counsel can surprise us with their decisions since there are more concentrated opinions and higher risk taking. Perhaps GitHub and youtube-dl is the only outcome that has surprised me recently.
troymc 6y ago
Twitter says they did it "due to a violation of Twitter policies, in particular the Counterfeiting Policy." The precipitating event was a lawsuit in India and the subsequent reactions. This article gives more details: https://reclaimthenet.org/twitter-bans-sci-hub/ https://reclaimthenet.org/twitter-bans-sci-hub/
acdha 6y ago
Elsevier and Wiley have a lot of lawyers who are likely arguing that leaving it up is condoning copyright infringement. There’s a long history of threats for anything related to targets of these lawsuits, and other companies taking something offline quickly to avoid being caught in the crossfire.
- fjabre 6y ago
  Hopefully with Dems in control we will see these companies punished for their bad behavior. Or at least laws passed that make the publication of research more open. The science should be funded and free. The applications of the science are where the money is to be made. These companies are unnecessary dinosaurs from a bygone era. It's time for them to fail and die off naturally. But it will probably take legislation to do so. And I for one can't wait to see them gone.
  - chalst 6y ago
    Biden has been very comfy as a senator with the expansive IP claims made by Hollywood. I think he is going to be something of a disappointment to you.
    - fjabre 6y ago
      That's unfortunate. Good thing he's really old with not much time left. Not that I wish him harm. He's certainly better than a lot of alternatives.
  - mywittyname 6y ago
    > These companies are unnecessary dinosaurs from a bygone era. Elsevier is a very diverse company with a lot of product offerings that are not antiquated. People here tend to just think of them as a journal publication company, but they are much more than that. The company sells (through subsidiaries) a lot of IT products to governments and law enforcement around the world. They, as a small example, offer a service that allow LEO to perform comprehensive background & arrest record checks on individuals in custody.
zerkten 6y ago
Liability and risk management. As soon as a lawyer becomes aware of a situation where an individual is using the service they are required to act to mitigate risk. There is no obligation for anyone to have access to a private service and they'll be weighing factors which include what 3rd parties might do. In this case it seems that they would have considered the actions of the companies running the paywalls. How likely would they be to take legal action (not all of which is public) against Twitter? Fairly likely, if they feel that Twitter is helping to publicize the service they want to take down. This is both in the legal and financial interest of Twitter. There is no real blow back from kicking off this person and their service versus dealing with US corporations. Copyright law changes and the impact of court decisions likely play a factor too. I find it hard to believe that some court somewhere, hasn't held Twitter (or similar service) liable for indirect copyright damages (that is likely being appealed.)

BrawnLongHaul 6y ago

We can only guess their motivations and who pulls their (Twitter's) strings behind the scenes. I am not sure that most of us here will ever find out.

llcoolv 6y ago
And even if we do, we will never know for sure.
- balozi 6y ago
  And even if we knew, we can never talk about it.
zerkten 6y ago
> We can only guess their motivations I don't understand this perspective, but I guess my own is built from experience. We can never know exactly what Twitter discussed internally before taking this action, but there is lots of external evidence and signals as to what happened. It's unlikely to be different from the action taken by most other corporations with legal teams. Small organizations with outside counsel can surprise us with their decisions since there are more concentrated opinions and higher risk taking. Perhaps GitHub and youtube-dl is the only outcome that has surprised me recently.

troymc 6y ago

Twitter says they did it "due to a violation of Twitter policies, in particular the Counterfeiting Policy." The precipitating event was a lawsuit in India and the subsequent reactions. This article gives more details: https://reclaimthenet.org/twitter-bans-sci-hub/ https://reclaimthenet.org/twitter-bans-sci-hub/

acdha 6y ago

Elsevier and Wiley have a lot of lawyers who are likely arguing that leaving it up is condoning copyright infringement. There’s a long history of threats for anything related to targets of these lawsuits, and other companies taking something offline quickly to avoid being caught in the crossfire.

fjabre 6y ago
Hopefully with Dems in control we will see these companies punished for their bad behavior. Or at least laws passed that make the publication of research more open. The science should be funded and free. The applications of the science are where the money is to be made. These companies are unnecessary dinosaurs from a bygone era. It's time for them to fail and die off naturally. But it will probably take legislation to do so. And I for one can't wait to see them gone.
- chalst 6y ago
  Biden has been very comfy as a senator with the expansive IP claims made by Hollywood. I think he is going to be something of a disappointment to you.
  - fjabre 6y ago
    That's unfortunate. Good thing he's really old with not much time left. Not that I wish him harm. He's certainly better than a lot of alternatives.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  > These companies are unnecessary dinosaurs from a bygone era. Elsevier is a very diverse company with a lot of product offerings that are not antiquated. People here tend to just think of them as a journal publication company, but they are much more than that. The company sells (through subsidiaries) a lot of IT products to governments and law enforcement around the world. They, as a small example, offer a service that allow LEO to perform comprehensive background & arrest record checks on individuals in custody.

zerkten 6y ago

Liability and risk management. As soon as a lawyer becomes aware of a situation where an individual is using the service they are required to act to mitigate risk. There is no obligation for anyone to have access to a private service and they'll be weighing factors which include what 3rd parties might do. In this case it seems that they would have considered the actions of the companies running the paywalls. How likely would they be to take legal action (not all of which is public) against Twitter? Fairly likely, if they feel that Twitter is helping to publicize the service they want to take down. This is both in the legal and financial interest of Twitter. There is no real blow back from kicking off this person and their service versus dealing with US corporations. Copyright law changes and the impact of court decisions likely play a factor too. I find it hard to believe that some court somewhere, hasn't held Twitter (or similar service) liable for indirect copyright damages (that is likely being appealed.)