4 ms·

"Russian hackers stealing valuable Western IP" actually kind of surprised I haven't heard this yet

tpmx 6y ago
She's Kazakhstani, not Russian, but... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Elbakyan#Views_and_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Elbakyan#Views_and_c... > Elbakyan has stated that she is inspired by communist ideals, although she does not consider herself a strict Marxist.] She has stated that she supports a strong state which can stand up to the Western world, and that she does not want "the scientists of Russia and of my native Kazakhstan to share the fates of the scientists of Iraq, Libya, and Syria, that were 'helped' by the USA to become more democratic." ... > In 2017, a species of parasitoid wasps discovered by Russian and Mexican entomologists was named after Elbakyan (Idiogramma elbakyanae). Elbakyan was offended by this, writing, "If you analyse the situation with scientific publications, the real parasites are scientific publishers, and Sci-Hub, on the contrary, fights for equal access to scientific information." Following this event, and in the context of her long-running tense relations with the liberal, pro-Western wing of the Russian scientific community, she blocked access to Sci-Hub for users from the Russian Federation. So basically she's a Putin supporter.
- xyzzy123 6y ago
  That seems overly reductive. Must all people who want the USA to do well be "Biden supporters" or "Trump supporters"? I think not.
  - tpmx 6y ago
    (I'm not american.) At the very least we should be able to agree that her goals align remarkably well with Putin's goals. And to be clear: I also believe that freeing scientific information from publishers is a nice goal - it's just that her goal is broader than that.
    - pessimizer 6y ago
      That famous Marxist, Putin.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      Putin is a parasite, a die-hard capitalist, and an oligarch. He isn't anything like Elbakyan ideologically, at all. I'm afraid you're ideologically illiterate.
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't take HN threads further into political, ideological, and/or nationalistic flamewar. This comment manages to be all three, and it's a step change in the thread—a step down. Let's climb the other way please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - tpmx 6y ago
    You're of course right. Sorry about that.
a_bonobo 6y ago
Scholarly Kitchen is the 'house' blog of the publishing industry, they've run very similar articles >https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/09/18/guest-post-think-sci-hub-is-just-downloading-pdfs-think-again/ https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/09/18/guest-post-th... >Let me be clear: Sci-Hub is not just stealing PDFs. They’re phishing, they’re spamming, they’re hacking, they’re password-cracking, and basically doing anything to find personal credentials to get into academic institutions. While illegal access to published content is the most obvious target, this is just the tip of an iceberg concealing underlying efforts to steal multiple streams of personal and research data from the world’s academic institutions. Comment 1: >The notion that Sci-Hub is not involved in hacking is laughable. The founder of Sci-Hub, when asked about this, disingenuously replies that Sci-Hub itself does not engage in hacking and phishing, without disputing that it relies on these to operate. More evidence that there is something big and powerful behind Sci-Hub: the Russian mafia. Or this howler, a blog-post on Russian information warfare that then goes into Sci-Hub: >In the scholarly information community, some individuals apparently sympathetic with the open information calls of Sci-Hub and LibGen actively shared authentication information, inadvertently providing institutional credentials to cybercriminals and cyberwarriors, who are probably still sitting on the usernames and passwords or, more likely, the information they grabbed before the passwords were changed. Experts estimate that we’ve seen 1% of the information Wikileaks and the Russians have purloined over the years. >https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2017/04/03/publishing-in-a-time-of-information-warfare-a-wakeup-call/ https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2017/04/03/publishing-in...
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Oh no, the cyber mafia warriors... Taking scientific papers and making them freely available??
- 177tcca 6y ago
  What's the Russian mob's next big play, then, Cartel? Reading cryptocurrency whitepapers, or selling CRISPR service out of the back of a truck? The fact that people still fall for this shit, on both sides of the table, is depressing.

tpmx 6y ago

She's Kazakhstani, not Russian, but... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Elbakyan#Views_and_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Elbakyan#Views_and_c... > Elbakyan has stated that she is inspired by communist ideals, although she does not consider herself a strict Marxist.] She has stated that she supports a strong state which can stand up to the Western world, and that she does not want "the scientists of Russia and of my native Kazakhstan to share the fates of the scientists of Iraq, Libya, and Syria, that were 'helped' by the USA to become more democratic." ... > In 2017, a species of parasitoid wasps discovered by Russian and Mexican entomologists was named after Elbakyan (Idiogramma elbakyanae). Elbakyan was offended by this, writing, "If you analyse the situation with scientific publications, the real parasites are scientific publishers, and Sci-Hub, on the contrary, fights for equal access to scientific information." Following this event, and in the context of her long-running tense relations with the liberal, pro-Western wing of the Russian scientific community, she blocked access to Sci-Hub for users from the Russian Federation. So basically she's a Putin supporter.

xyzzy123 6y ago
That seems overly reductive. Must all people who want the USA to do well be "Biden supporters" or "Trump supporters"? I think not.
- tpmx 6y ago
  (I'm not american.) At the very least we should be able to agree that her goals align remarkably well with Putin's goals. And to be clear: I also believe that freeing scientific information from publishers is a nice goal - it's just that her goal is broader than that.
  - pessimizer 6y ago
    That famous Marxist, Putin.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Putin is a parasite, a die-hard capitalist, and an oligarch. He isn't anything like Elbakyan ideologically, at all. I'm afraid you're ideologically illiterate.
dang 6y ago
Please don't take HN threads further into political, ideological, and/or nationalistic flamewar. This comment manages to be all three, and it's a step change in the thread—a step down. Let's climb the other way please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- tpmx 6y ago
  You're of course right. Sorry about that.

a_bonobo 6y ago

Scholarly Kitchen is the 'house' blog of the publishing industry, they've run very similar articles >https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/09/18/guest-post-think-sci-hub-is-just-downloading-pdfs-think-again/ https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/09/18/guest-post-th... >Let me be clear: Sci-Hub is not just stealing PDFs. They’re phishing, they’re spamming, they’re hacking, they’re password-cracking, and basically doing anything to find personal credentials to get into academic institutions. While illegal access to published content is the most obvious target, this is just the tip of an iceberg concealing underlying efforts to steal multiple streams of personal and research data from the world’s academic institutions. Comment 1: >The notion that Sci-Hub is not involved in hacking is laughable. The founder of Sci-Hub, when asked about this, disingenuously replies that Sci-Hub itself does not engage in hacking and phishing, without disputing that it relies on these to operate. More evidence that there is something big and powerful behind Sci-Hub: the Russian mafia. Or this howler, a blog-post on Russian information warfare that then goes into Sci-Hub: >In the scholarly information community, some individuals apparently sympathetic with the open information calls of Sci-Hub and LibGen actively shared authentication information, inadvertently providing institutional credentials to cybercriminals and cyberwarriors, who are probably still sitting on the usernames and passwords or, more likely, the information they grabbed before the passwords were changed. Experts estimate that we’ve seen 1% of the information Wikileaks and the Russians have purloined over the years. >https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2017/04/03/publishing-in-a-time-of-information-warfare-a-wakeup-call/ https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2017/04/03/publishing-in...

sudosysgen 6y ago
Oh no, the cyber mafia warriors... Taking scientific papers and making them freely available??
177tcca 6y ago
What's the Russian mob's next big play, then, Cartel? Reading cryptocurrency whitepapers, or selling CRISPR service out of the back of a truck? The fact that people still fall for this shit, on both sides of the table, is depressing.