18 ms·

FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder

562 points by __debugger__ 5y ago

mariuolo 5y ago
Not much they can do to her in Russia. I also assume she's smart enough not to keep anything important in her iCloud.
- BelenusMordred 5y ago
  > Not much they can do to her in X I think you really underestimate the power of smear/ blackmail campaigns and how effectively they have worked in the last century for the intelligence services. This has nothing to do with upholding the law.
  - that_guy_iain 5y ago
    But this isn’t a intelligence agency matter. Just standard law enforcement.
  - imglorp 5y ago
    Look what happened to Kim Dotcom over US copyright at the behest of the corporate content owners: swat team, extradition hearings, the works. The US penalties are greater than murder.
    - guerrilla 5y ago
      He wasn't in Russia though, Snowden is in Russia.
      - danuker 5y ago
        Note to self: if I find myself in the crosshairs of the US government, move to Russia.
        periheli0n 5y ago
        Not that Snowden leads an open and tremendously free live in Russia. At least that's not what it sounded like in his autobiography.
        seniorivn 5y ago
        surprisingly his life is a lot more free and open, than you would imagine, so much that russian politically involved people suspect he has some kind of a deal with KGB(FSB, etc) that he can't talk about.
        periheli0n 5y ago
        He wrote that he‘s changing apartments every few months and that he’s always wrapping his face in a scarf as much as possible when going outside. Didn’t sound like a tremendously free and relaxed life. Plus he’s in exile.
        guerrilla 5y ago
        Is that different than many celebrities?
    - matheusmoreira 5y ago
      Yeah, it's insanity. That guy somehow got worse treatment than violent drug traffickers.
      - erikpukinskis 5y ago
        As far as I can tell he didn’t do anything illegal either? Same business model as YouTube, which didn’t have any SWAT teams on it.
    - nurgasemetey 5y ago
      I don't understand one thing. Why Germany didn't interfere extradiction? (I assume that he held Germany citizenship)
      - ryanlol 5y ago
        Why would they?
      - periheli0n 5y ago
        Because Schmitz was in New Zealand at the time. Not much Germany can do to overturn NZ law. Germany is not the US after all…
        ryanlol 5y ago
        Germany could interfere if they wanted to, Kimble just isn’t worth the trouble (few people would be). There are things you can do, see how Russia is handling these things when their VIPs are targeted for extradition. Ordinary citizens with no high up political or IC connections never receive any significant state aid in extradition cases no matter what passport they hold. At best your embassy might refer you to a lawyer or help you arrange money transfer from your home country.
  - lostlogin 5y ago
    > This has nothing to do with upholding the law. It had everything to do with New Zealand politicians trying to impress the powerful. It’s was embarrassing. Said as a New Zealander.
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      It definity made New Zealand look like a place where the rule law doesn't necessarily apply fairly. Ironically the rule of law would prevent the US from doing the same thing if New Zealand made a similiar request.
  - newacct583 5y ago
    > This has nothing to do with upholding the law. No, the law is actually very clear here. What sci-hub does is clear copyright violation. There's no real debate to be had. Civil cases where damages get into the tens of millions of dollars routinely involve law enforcement. It's no different from a big insider trading case as far as the FBI is concerned. The fundamental truth behind the protest (and again it's important to realize: sci-hub is an act of protest) is that the law is unjust. Rosa Parks was in clear violation of the written law too. The reason for the pedantry is that if you imagine this as solely an act of an unrestrained state actor, you won't be incentivized to work for the actual solution, which involves passing laws and otherwise working with the same state you're complaining about.
    - BelenusMordred 5y ago
      > What sci-hub does is clear copyright violation. Think you've misunderstood my point, this is without a doubt a fishing expedition for no real purpose. Alexandra Elbakyan is already convicted and will be extradited the moment she steps outside the country, there's very likely sealed indictments waiting in the shadows too, the evidence for her crimes are overwhelming and without dispute by anyone. Things like this are just another chance at a smear campaign, they really don't care about what laws have been broken now, that part is over, all they want is leverage. Flashback 2 years: > A former senior U.S. intelligence official said he believes Elbakyan is working with Russia’s military intelligence arm, the GRU, the same organization that stole emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman and then provided them to WikiLeaks in 2016. As reported in the Washington Post and others. See how conveniently these two seemingly unrelated matters are being connected? Why would a respected newspaper go off on a segue like that? https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191226/14393243638/academic-publishers-get-their-wish-doj-investigating-sci-hub-founder-alleged-ties-to-russian-intelligence.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191226/14393243638/acade...
  - janeroe 5y ago
    > you really underestimate the power of smear ... campaigns Not much they can do really. Elbakyan is a Stalinist who thinks the mass killer was a saint sent by God. She discredits herself at interviews and on her personal web-site just fine. None of that matters. People are using sci-hub because it's useful, crazyness of its author is irrelevant.
    - dang 5y ago
      Your account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's against the site guidelines and we ban accounts that do it, regardless of which ideology they're battling for or against. We have to, because it destroys the curious conversation that HN is supposed to be for. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use this site in the intended spirit from now on? We'd be grateful.
      - janeroe 5y ago
        Which comment exactly did you perceive as ideological? Criticism of Stalin?
- brjfkgkrnr 5y ago
  But then again there is a lot Russia can do to her, for example use her as a token in exchange for some US favour at some convenient time.
  - mariuolo 5y ago
    It would have to be a /very/ big favour to sell out a CIS citizen.
  - dartharva 5y ago
    Doesn't seem very likely. What exactly would the US gain except some face value before "Science Journal" oligarchs (which in itself, doesn't seem valuable)? Sounds like a bad deal if the US ever did any favor for them in exchange of one relatively harmless individual. Sci-hub likely won't even be hurt if they somehow get Elbakyan. She must have had other people to fall back on for the project, who'll continue to keep the website online.
egberts1 5y ago
Surely Apple Legal team uses “gmail.com”?
- acebarry 5y ago
  The screenshot is from the person who received the email. It's unlikely an Apple lawyer would screenshot something like this.
hu3 5y ago
Interestingly, FBI sent the request on 2019-02-06 and only two years later was Apple allowed to notify her.
- slim 5y ago
  So FBI was spying on her for two years?
  - taormina 5y ago
    You think its only been for two years?
kome 5y ago
Alexandra Elbakyan is a hero. Nothing less than that. Let's celebrate her and the memory of Aaron Swartz. Swartz was pushed to suicide because this oppressive system. Let's fight against this. Let's put our money and time to sustain Elbakyan's effort to open science.
- yonaguska 5y ago
  The FBI are the good guys now, didn't you hear? They started spying on Trump and Rudy's iCloud communications the day Trump hired him. At least they had the balls to recognize that attorney-client privilege isn't for Nazis.
  - kingsuper20 5y ago
    A short term problem with long term benefits. The great gift of Trump to the world was to, at least partly, flush out the substrate that actually runs things. If at least part of the population becomes sensitive to that it was all worthwhile. Given our mutual swirling down the drain of a total surveillance society any hesitation in the process is a godsend.
ytch 5y ago
That's why I decided dropping iCloud backup and enable locally iPhone encrypted backup.
- eatbitseveryday 5y ago
  Realize also that communication you have with others, for example via iMessage, may be stored at Apple if they have iCloud backup enabled.
  - bilbo0s 5y ago
    Only if you have it enabled. But it wouldn't matter anyway, that other party in the communication could easily be somewhere with phone service but no data. Or someone in the group sms could be on a non apple device. Boom, Just like that, your communications have been sent to multiple carriers, including your own. Those carriers all pinky swear that they won't do anything bad with your sms though. So I suppose it's not that much of a problem. /s Why would anyone use a public network to communicate in secret? If you have a need for stealth communication with another individual, (maybe you're a dissident or what have you), then you should use the proper techniques. And, yes, keep your data encrypted on your own iPhone. Do not back it up to iCloud. Or Amazon Photos. Or Backblaze. Or Dropbox. Or etc etc etc. Oh, and never, ever, use Android. You likely don't have the technical know how to make a commercially available android device private.
    - danuker 5y ago
      > Only if you have it enabled. What? If you back up your messages, don't you get the messages from your contacts? Why wouldn't they get yours?
    - modeless 5y ago
      > Only if you have it enabled. No. If the other person has it enabled then your messages with them are stored by and readable by Apple no matter what your settings are.
    - nichch 5y ago
slimsag 5y ago
Sounds like she's been in hiding since 2015[0]: > Following a 2015 lawsuit brought in the US by the publisher Elsevier, Elbakyan remains in hiding due to the risk of extradition; Elsevier was granted an injunction against her and $15 million in damages. Elbakyan and Sci-Hub were again involved in a US lawsuit in 2017, this time with the American Chemical Society. ACS sued the site for copyright and trademark violations, and conversion. Later that year, the court ruled in favor of ACS, fining Sci-Hub $4,800,000 in damages, enjoining further infringement, and prohibiting search engines and domain name registries from "facilitating access" to Sci-Hub. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Elbakyan#Creating_Sci-Hub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Elbakyan#Creating_Sc...
- hirundo 5y ago
  > and prohibiting search engines and domain name registries from "facilitating access" to Sci-Hub. I just searched for "sci-hub" on DDG, Google and Bing, and the sci-hub.st or sci-hub.se domain was the top result on each. I wonder what happened to the prohibition.
  - concordDance 5y ago
    Here in the UK the main sci-hub domains are blocked at the ISP level. We're a very censorous country.
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      Does using DNS over HTTPS avoid this block? Edit: Thank you for the replies.
      - scarygliders 5y ago
        Nope. Just tried. Hard redirect to http://www.ukispcourtorders.co.uk/?JNI_URL=sci-hub.st/&JNI_REASON=BY_USER_DEFINED&JNI_CATEGORY=court_order_category_1000&JNI_REPUTATION=BY_SITE_REPUTATION_NULL_REPUTATION&JNI_POLICY=cf_profile&JNI_SRCIP=146.198.195.124&JNI_SRCPORT=54030&JNI_DSTIP=186.2.163.201&JNI_DSTPORT=80 http://www.ukispcourtorders.co.uk/?JNI_URL=sci-hub.st/&JNI_R...
slothtrop 5y ago
Shows you where their priorities lie, protecting wealthy interests.
- dukeofdoom 5y ago
  Common people on the right now distrust the justice department and the courts as much as the people on the left.
sonicggg 5y ago
Are they looking for people outside Russia that may be helping her? There's not much they can do while she's living there.
- breck 5y ago
  Hey FBI, I've emailed her my support. And I'm a U.S. Citizen. I have great respect for the FBI and law enforcement in general, but on this particular issue you can go fuck yourselves. Going after a woman fighting to ensure all people, rich and poor, have access to the world's scientific information. That is a slap in the face to the American ideals of liberty and the sacrifices that tens of millions of freedom fighting Americans have made for centuries. Open your eyes.
  - Dah00n 5y ago
    (Sorry this sounds harsh but im using your words here.) If you believe America have true "ideals of liberty" and the million of Americans who have died in wars "fought for freedom" I think it is yourself that need to "open your eyes".
    - breck 5y ago
      I will not argue your point that there have always been many people from American who have not embodied the American ideals. However, there have been plenty that have. And millions more come here from countries all around the world to continue building that great future. Ideals like: "all people are created equal" "government of the people, by the people, for the people" "Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," "An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."
      - breck 5y ago
        The bigger point is that there are few countries in the world where I can say "on this particular issue you can go fuck yourselves" to the top law enforcement agency and actually have a % chance of not being shot or put behind bars for it. America ain't perfect, but I've been to about 40 countries and if I had to choose, I'd bet on America 10/10 times.
periheli0n 5y ago
I'm somewhat positively surprised that there was a notice at all. This means that even non-US citizens enjoy some rights for being informed about data sharing. Silver lining.
- rusk 5y ago
  A nice side benefit of Europeans insisting on theirs!
dukeofdoom 5y ago
For some reason I thought iCloud was encrypted in such a way that only the user could gain access. Apparently this is not the case. FBI was able to access even Rudy Giuliani's iCloud for over a year, while he defended Trump as his lawyer. With no repercussions for doing so. https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/lawyer-feds-got-rudy-icloud-023335029.html https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/lawyer-feds-got-rudy-iclou...
- rtx 5y ago
  Who are they loyal too.
haxiomic 5y ago
Science Publisher Elsevier's reported profit margin is 38%, compared to Apple's 21% – there's lot of cash at stake for them and a big warchest to defend it For anyone looking to understand the background on the science publishing industry, how it ended up this way and why they will fight Sci-Hub so aggressively, I found this discussion really informative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PriwCi6SzLo&t=8s&ab_channel=MedlifeCrisis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PriwCi6SzLo&t=8s&ab_channel=...
- ma2rten 5y ago
  I'm wondering why it's only 38%. They charge a lot and mostly work with volunteers. It should not cost 62% of what they charge to run a website to host some pdfs.
  - haxiomic 5y ago
    It's certainly more tax efficient to reduce your reported profits by finding ways to bury revenue This is the best breakdown I can find on their parent company RELX: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/RELX/relx/cash-flow-statement https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/RELX/relx/cash-flo...
  - r_singh 5y ago
    They invest in making clinic decision support software to make research accessible to doctors, etc (it’s practically also making decisions for them at times). Source - have attended an Elsevier CDSS Sales presentation for HCPs
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    The rest might be laundered somehow.
  - 8note 5y ago
    Likely some other company in the Cayman islands owns their intellectual property, and they they pay a good portion of their revenue to license it.
  - cbkeller 5y ago
kingsuper20 5y ago
Given the provenance of most (all?) of the material on Sci-Hub, the copyright issues here seem laughable to me. Fruitless speculation about the FBI aside, you do have to wonder about the future of IP generally in the world. There's a sort of evolutionary pressure going on right now between different countries' approach to the matter and I can't say that the US-style rules will hold (or more realistically, be imposed).
- jMyles 5y ago
  It seems so absolutely obvious that a jurisdiction adopting a "there is no such thing as IP" approach will have a huge advantage. What's the reason this hasn't happened?
  - layoutIfNeeded 5y ago
    Have you heard about a country called “China”?
  - SirSourdough 5y ago
    I mean, that’s pretty much China’s position with regards to other countries IP as I understand it. There’s just a lot of power still held by the nations that do support a US-style approach to IP, so many countries have incentive not to ignore IP laws.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      IIRC, even they have been forced to increase enforcement of western IP rights over the last decade, because US has been pressuring them to (back before Trump and the whole trade war thing). This is a generally applicable answer: IP rights hold power worldwide mostly because the no.1 country that wants them has military and economic dominance over most of the planet.
      - arp242 5y ago
        Chinese companies file a huge amount of patents at the US patent office; 20 years ago, when they didn't have many of their own patents, it didn't make much sense to enforce foreign patents in their own country. But now that China has its own large patent portfolio abroad, it makes a lot more sense to cooperate so they can enforce these patents, too.
tandav 5y ago
“What Happens on your iPhone, Stays on your iPhone” - they said https://i.imgur.com/Dfk34yM.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Dfk34yM.jpg
- daemoon 5y ago
  Thats why they said that and not “What is on your iCloud, stays on your iCloud”
  - laurent92 5y ago
    A lot of people have porn on their phone, and none would be able to prove its provenance. I wonder if one day Apple will be required to detect all underage model photos and delete the person’s entire Apple account.
    - Dah00n 5y ago
      I think it more likely Apple would ban porn "to protect the user" if anti-porn became more normal.
  - beermonster 5y ago
    I said, "Hey, you, get off of my cloud Hey, you, get off of my cloud Hey, you, get off of my cloud Don't hang around 'cause two's a crowd On my cloud, baby"
- bilbo0s 5y ago
  it does. Unless you tell your iPhone to send everything you have to Amazon, or Dropbox, or iCloud, or Google, or Facebook, or Backblaze, or [insert cloud service subject to Chinese, EU, or US law here].
  - hu3 5y ago
    or iCloud
  - uo21tp5hoyg 5y ago
xNeil 5y ago
I'm not sure I understand the concept of paid access to scientific research, so I'd be grateful if someone with more knowledge of the topic could explain it to me. Governments fund universities, people donate large amounts of money to universities, and a large portion of the population has student debt because of how expensive tuition is. Why are they charging for access to research at these institutions then?
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  You'd think its because peer review costs money, but they are largely unpaid for that work. So, there's no real answer beyond "capitalism."
  - cyrksoft 5y ago
    What's exactly capitalistic about this? They charge for something they have no property or own. In my experience (and every researcher I know does this) researchers have their own websites where they publish a free pdf version of the research (without the format of the published paper, just a simpler pdf version) or even email it to you if you ask them to (those without a website, for example). I am not sure what exactly is "capitalism" about these journals.
    - rusk 5y ago
      > What's exactly capitalistic about this? Squeezing as much profit as possible for shareholders while externalising costs. It’s a poster child when you think about it!
    - 13415 5y ago
      They charge shitloads of money to universities for accessing their journals, these fees are so high that e.g. our university is very picky about which "packet" they buy and limit them to institutions on a case-by-case basis. The copies on the author's pages and in open repositories are obliged to be pre-publication drafts, so you cannot cite them. In fact, under control of large publishers journals have become fairly inventive about making pre-publication manuscripts unusable. For instance, I recently published in a prestigious journal that had an online editing system so that all final revisions stayed in the system - no author copy of any kind, every proof marked with author name and large watermarks -, and they made lots of small, sometimes unnecessary changes in the very last editing step. They also don't paginate the final versions that are published online first, so you can only know the real final pagination a year or so after the first version has been published online.
tyingq 5y ago
I imagine Kazakhstan will be less than cooperative with similar requests. Though I'd be terrified to travel if I were her now.
ur-whale 5y ago
Your tax dollar at work.
whatever1 5y ago
Where can I file for my damages as a reviewer? I have lost more than 2000 hours reviewing papers for for-profit publishers and they never gave me a single penny. edit: Heck many of them they did not even give me free access to their journal to check references from the papers I was reviewing for them. I had to rely on SciHub to do so.
- michaf 5y ago
  Your comment brings focus to the question of why reviewers agree to do these unpaid reviews in the first place. I assume your comment is in jest, and you were fully aware of the unpaid nature of the work. But what was your motivation to do it anyway and spend 2000 hours on it?
  - matthewdgreen 5y ago
    This is like asking an open source maintainer what their motive was to contribute to an important piece of software, since it’s going to be hosted on a for-profit entity like GitHub. The motive is that reviewing is necessary to make science work (and secondarily it’s required for promotions etc.) The problem in this setting is that Elsevier is part of the equation and demands copyright ownership, which makes it much worse than hosting on something GitHub. Unfortunately “just stop contributing” isn’t a good answer, because that would throw out the baby with the bath water, and scientists care very deeply about the baby.
    - whatever1 5y ago
      Which was kinda ok, until the moment they started going after the people who are creating the Journals' IP and value / reputation.
  - jhrmnn 5y ago
    When I do peer review, I don’t think of it as providing free service to the publisher, but as providing free service to the scientific community. I’m indirectly paid to do so by my employer. IMO employers of scientists should strike deals with publishers to get compensation for peer review from them.
cblconfederate 5y ago
15-20 years and science still hasn't solved the publishing problem. Shameful, or a sign of times
- periheli0n 5y ago
  Publishing is not the problem since we have the internet. The problem is the botched science career system, how performance of academics/researchers is evaluated, how anybody beneath the tenured academic is exploited. Publishing is just a decoy from this much larger problem.
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    By publishing i meant editing, which is the only bit missing. How hard is it for major research associations to create publicly funded editorial boards to coordinate the (already free) authorship and reviewing
    - periheli0n 5y ago
      They are doing this, and they then team up with for-profit publishers to create a journal. Except for the "publicly funded" bit. I am not aware of public funds that would be available for editorial boards created by science organisations.
crazypython 5y ago
Finally, news about a hacker on Hacker News! If you are a hacker, you: - Mistrust authority - Promote decentralization - Share knowledge - Write open-source software - Maintain the infrastructure - Serve humanity - Are curious http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
- danuker 5y ago
  Thank you for linking the classic catb pages!
- crumbshot 5y ago
  By her own words, in creating and maintaining Sci-Hub, Elbakyan was driven by communist ideals: https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc850001 https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc850001 https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc920674 https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc920674 Interesting to observe how it overlaps with this conception of the hacker spirit. If only the world had many more Alexandra Elbakyans, and fewer Elseviers. Humanity as a whole would be a lot better off without the capitalists ruining everything with their insatiable greed.
  - generalizations 5y ago
    Yeah, like that horrible capitalist company that funded the research lab which invented the transistor, Unix and C. We'd be so much better off without it out its 'capitalist, profit-driven creations'. (AT&T, Bell labs) /s
    - crumbshot 5y ago
      Despite your unnecessary sarcasm, this is actually a good example, seeing as the company was eventually destroyed by the US government for abusing its monopoly position. They did indeed fund a highly successful research centre, but - importantly to its success - one that wasn't run with the same ideals as its parent. It wasn't Bell Labs itself that endeavoured to monopolise an entire industry to the point where the government had to intervene.
xvilka 5y ago
Apart from the solving problem with paywall, Sci-Hub UX is 1000x times better than official journals. It's basically a Google of scientific articles today.
deleted 5y ago
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Iv 5y ago
Alexandra Elbakyan is a perfect example of someone who deserves a presidential pardon.
libeclipse 5y ago
Apparently Sci-Hub has paused uploading new papers to the site: https://www.reddit.com/r/scihub/comments/lofj0r/announcement_scihub_has_been_paused_no_new/ https://www.reddit.com/r/scihub/comments/lofj0r/announcement...
periheli0n 5y ago
I don't really get this whole frenzy about copyrighted papers. Why not just ask the authors for a copy? Most will happily share.
- Dah00n 5y ago
  Because the authors are not allowed to share. If they do they are in breach of contract.
  - periheli0n 5y ago
    Authors can always privately share their paper.
    - Dah00n 5y ago
      It is not allowed by many (most?) contracts to share papers so while they can it is still breaking a contract they signed.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  Because A) that in itself shows that the whole rigmarole of ostensibly assigning sole copyright to these "journals" is a ridiculously unnecessary charade, and B) Where are you going to get their contact information from? There would need to be aome centralised registry to connect scientific subjects to author details, Idunno, like some kind of... "Journal" or something? C) And if you're already going to such a place anyway, then the actual content of the articles could also be there for everyone to read directly, without having to bother the authors with correspondence. What you're defending is a humongous stupid Rube Goldberg boondoggle.
deleted 5y ago
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boramalper 5y ago
What I find the most fascinating is that a single person, possibly with the help of a few select others, is able to curate, index, host, and serve 85% of scholarly literature[0] which otherwise would be inaccessible to many. 80 million papers are available on Sci-Hub to its half a million daily users.[1] That is around 80 TB of data, and 2 TB of daily outbound traffic.[2] Given the fact that Sci-Hub has achieved all those whilst being forced to operate under the radar, I have massive respect for Elbakyan first and then all the others that have helped it survive. Not only Sci-Hub is an undeniable disruption, but also an amazing technical feat that many startups would envy. [0]: https://greenelab.github.io/scihub-manuscript/ https://greenelab.github.io/scihub-manuscript/ [1]: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://roskomsvoboda.org/49416/ https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https... [2]: 3 articles × each 2 MB × per 400k users ~ 2.4 TB. P.S. Seed its torrents!
- gravypod 5y ago
  Something that came up often when talking to people at my college was that our extremely expensive contracts with publishers/journals were to support the complex infrastructure required to maintain a service like that. We're talking multi million dollars per year per university per journal contracts. Reviewers are volunteers. Hosting costs, as shown by Sci-Hub, are negligible. How much does it cost to replicate a file system across 5 to 10 data centers, have a 10G link to each data center, and run a few nodes to serve web traffic? Probably a small fraction of the budgets we pay for journals. > P.S. Seed its torrents! I know no one will give legal advice here but: is this legal to do?
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    Seeding copyrighted content? No, not legal.
    - superkuh 5y ago
      That's true. Putting tax funded research studies behind corporate paywalls also is in many contexts and jurisdictions. But it's funny how that one doesn't ever get prosecuted.
seniorivn 5y ago
there is a recent interview with her(she rarely gives any) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG_I2QQc9Ww https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG_I2QQc9Ww SVTV channel, it's in Russian, youtube automatic subtitles are not bad, so if you must you can use them.
aerovistae 5y ago
How do they have nothing better to do than this???? Who is directing them to put resources towards this? How is protecting entrenched academic journal profits a priority for the FBI?
wellthisisgreat 5y ago
She deserves a Nobel Prize, it’s that simple
- ta_ca 5y ago
  but nobel prize doesn't deserve her
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
chosen1111 5y ago
OH SAY CAN YOU SEEEEEE!!
smsm42 5y ago
I remember when those broad search powers and gag warrants were fist introduced, we were told it's going to be used against terrorists, and there's no other way - national security requires it. Obviously, now national security also requires destroying SciHub. That, or we have been lied to - again, and the liars suffered zero consequences - again, so they will keep doing the same - again and again.

562 points by __debugger__ 5y ago

mariuolo 5y ago

Not much they can do to her in Russia. I also assume she's smart enough not to keep anything important in her iCloud.

BelenusMordred 5y ago
> Not much they can do to her in X I think you really underestimate the power of smear/ blackmail campaigns and how effectively they have worked in the last century for the intelligence services. This has nothing to do with upholding the law.
- that_guy_iain 5y ago
  But this isn’t a intelligence agency matter. Just standard law enforcement.
- imglorp 5y ago
  Look what happened to Kim Dotcom over US copyright at the behest of the corporate content owners: swat team, extradition hearings, the works. The US penalties are greater than murder.
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    He wasn't in Russia though, Snowden is in Russia.
    - danuker 5y ago
      Note to self: if I find myself in the crosshairs of the US government, move to Russia.
      - periheli0n 5y ago
        Not that Snowden leads an open and tremendously free live in Russia. At least that's not what it sounded like in his autobiography.
        seniorivn 5y ago
        surprisingly his life is a lot more free and open, than you would imagine, so much that russian politically involved people suspect he has some kind of a deal with KGB(FSB, etc) that he can't talk about.
        periheli0n 5y ago
        He wrote that he‘s changing apartments every few months and that he’s always wrapping his face in a scarf as much as possible when going outside. Didn’t sound like a tremendously free and relaxed life. Plus he’s in exile.
        guerrilla 5y ago
        Is that different than many celebrities?
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    Yeah, it's insanity. That guy somehow got worse treatment than violent drug traffickers.
    - erikpukinskis 5y ago
      As far as I can tell he didn’t do anything illegal either? Same business model as YouTube, which didn’t have any SWAT teams on it.
  - nurgasemetey 5y ago
    I don't understand one thing. Why Germany didn't interfere extradiction? (I assume that he held Germany citizenship)
    - ryanlol 5y ago
      Why would they?
    - periheli0n 5y ago
      Because Schmitz was in New Zealand at the time. Not much Germany can do to overturn NZ law. Germany is not the US after all…
      - ryanlol 5y ago
        Germany could interfere if they wanted to, Kimble just isn’t worth the trouble (few people would be). There are things you can do, see how Russia is handling these things when their VIPs are targeted for extradition. Ordinary citizens with no high up political or IC connections never receive any significant state aid in extradition cases no matter what passport they hold. At best your embassy might refer you to a lawyer or help you arrange money transfer from your home country.
- lostlogin 5y ago
  > This has nothing to do with upholding the law. It had everything to do with New Zealand politicians trying to impress the powerful. It’s was embarrassing. Said as a New Zealander.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    It definity made New Zealand look like a place where the rule law doesn't necessarily apply fairly. Ironically the rule of law would prevent the US from doing the same thing if New Zealand made a similiar request.
- newacct583 5y ago
  > This has nothing to do with upholding the law. No, the law is actually very clear here. What sci-hub does is clear copyright violation. There's no real debate to be had. Civil cases where damages get into the tens of millions of dollars routinely involve law enforcement. It's no different from a big insider trading case as far as the FBI is concerned. The fundamental truth behind the protest (and again it's important to realize: sci-hub is an act of protest) is that the law is unjust. Rosa Parks was in clear violation of the written law too. The reason for the pedantry is that if you imagine this as solely an act of an unrestrained state actor, you won't be incentivized to work for the actual solution, which involves passing laws and otherwise working with the same state you're complaining about.
  - BelenusMordred 5y ago
    > What sci-hub does is clear copyright violation. Think you've misunderstood my point, this is without a doubt a fishing expedition for no real purpose. Alexandra Elbakyan is already convicted and will be extradited the moment she steps outside the country, there's very likely sealed indictments waiting in the shadows too, the evidence for her crimes are overwhelming and without dispute by anyone. Things like this are just another chance at a smear campaign, they really don't care about what laws have been broken now, that part is over, all they want is leverage. Flashback 2 years: > A former senior U.S. intelligence official said he believes Elbakyan is working with Russia’s military intelligence arm, the GRU, the same organization that stole emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman and then provided them to WikiLeaks in 2016. As reported in the Washington Post and others. See how conveniently these two seemingly unrelated matters are being connected? Why would a respected newspaper go off on a segue like that? https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191226/14393243638/academic-publishers-get-their-wish-doj-investigating-sci-hub-founder-alleged-ties-to-russian-intelligence.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191226/14393243638/acade...
- janeroe 5y ago
  > you really underestimate the power of smear ... campaigns Not much they can do really. Elbakyan is a Stalinist who thinks the mass killer was a saint sent by God. She discredits herself at interviews and on her personal web-site just fine. None of that matters. People are using sci-hub because it's useful, crazyness of its author is irrelevant.
  - dang 5y ago
    Your account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's against the site guidelines and we ban accounts that do it, regardless of which ideology they're battling for or against. We have to, because it destroys the curious conversation that HN is supposed to be for. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use this site in the intended spirit from now on? We'd be grateful.
    - janeroe 5y ago
      Which comment exactly did you perceive as ideological? Criticism of Stalin?
brjfkgkrnr 5y ago
But then again there is a lot Russia can do to her, for example use her as a token in exchange for some US favour at some convenient time.
- mariuolo 5y ago
  It would have to be a /very/ big favour to sell out a CIS citizen.
- dartharva 5y ago
  Doesn't seem very likely. What exactly would the US gain except some face value before "Science Journal" oligarchs (which in itself, doesn't seem valuable)? Sounds like a bad deal if the US ever did any favor for them in exchange of one relatively harmless individual. Sci-hub likely won't even be hurt if they somehow get Elbakyan. She must have had other people to fall back on for the project, who'll continue to keep the website online.

egberts1 5y ago

Surely Apple Legal team uses “gmail.com”?

acebarry 5y ago
The screenshot is from the person who received the email. It's unlikely an Apple lawyer would screenshot something like this.

hu3 5y ago

Interestingly, FBI sent the request on 2019-02-06 and only two years later was Apple allowed to notify her.

slim 5y ago
So FBI was spying on her for two years?
- taormina 5y ago
  You think its only been for two years?

kome 5y ago

Alexandra Elbakyan is a hero. Nothing less than that. Let's celebrate her and the memory of Aaron Swartz. Swartz was pushed to suicide because this oppressive system. Let's fight against this. Let's put our money and time to sustain Elbakyan's effort to open science.

yonaguska 5y ago
The FBI are the good guys now, didn't you hear? They started spying on Trump and Rudy's iCloud communications the day Trump hired him. At least they had the balls to recognize that attorney-client privilege isn't for Nazis.
- kingsuper20 5y ago
  A short term problem with long term benefits. The great gift of Trump to the world was to, at least partly, flush out the substrate that actually runs things. If at least part of the population becomes sensitive to that it was all worthwhile. Given our mutual swirling down the drain of a total surveillance society any hesitation in the process is a godsend.

ytch 5y ago

That's why I decided dropping iCloud backup and enable locally iPhone encrypted backup.

eatbitseveryday 5y ago
Realize also that communication you have with others, for example via iMessage, may be stored at Apple if they have iCloud backup enabled.
- bilbo0s 5y ago
  Only if you have it enabled. But it wouldn't matter anyway, that other party in the communication could easily be somewhere with phone service but no data. Or someone in the group sms could be on a non apple device. Boom, Just like that, your communications have been sent to multiple carriers, including your own. Those carriers all pinky swear that they won't do anything bad with your sms though. So I suppose it's not that much of a problem. /s Why would anyone use a public network to communicate in secret? If you have a need for stealth communication with another individual, (maybe you're a dissident or what have you), then you should use the proper techniques. And, yes, keep your data encrypted on your own iPhone. Do not back it up to iCloud. Or Amazon Photos. Or Backblaze. Or Dropbox. Or etc etc etc. Oh, and never, ever, use Android. You likely don't have the technical know how to make a commercially available android device private.
  - danuker 5y ago
    > Only if you have it enabled. What? If you back up your messages, don't you get the messages from your contacts? Why wouldn't they get yours?
  - modeless 5y ago
    > Only if you have it enabled. No. If the other person has it enabled then your messages with them are stored by and readable by Apple no matter what your settings are.
  - nichch 5y ago

slimsag 5y ago

Sounds like she's been in hiding since 2015[0]: > Following a 2015 lawsuit brought in the US by the publisher Elsevier, Elbakyan remains in hiding due to the risk of extradition; Elsevier was granted an injunction against her and $15 million in damages. Elbakyan and Sci-Hub were again involved in a US lawsuit in 2017, this time with the American Chemical Society. ACS sued the site for copyright and trademark violations, and conversion. Later that year, the court ruled in favor of ACS, fining Sci-Hub $4,800,000 in damages, enjoining further infringement, and prohibiting search engines and domain name registries from "facilitating access" to Sci-Hub. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Elbakyan#Creating_Sci-Hub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Elbakyan#Creating_Sc...

hirundo 5y ago
> and prohibiting search engines and domain name registries from "facilitating access" to Sci-Hub. I just searched for "sci-hub" on DDG, Google and Bing, and the sci-hub.st or sci-hub.se domain was the top result on each. I wonder what happened to the prohibition.
- concordDance 5y ago
  Here in the UK the main sci-hub domains are blocked at the ISP level. We're a very censorous country.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Does using DNS over HTTPS avoid this block? Edit: Thank you for the replies.
    - scarygliders 5y ago
      Nope. Just tried. Hard redirect to http://www.ukispcourtorders.co.uk/?JNI_URL=sci-hub.st/&JNI_REASON=BY_USER_DEFINED&JNI_CATEGORY=court_order_category_1000&JNI_REPUTATION=BY_SITE_REPUTATION_NULL_REPUTATION&JNI_POLICY=cf_profile&JNI_SRCIP=146.198.195.124&JNI_SRCPORT=54030&JNI_DSTIP=186.2.163.201&JNI_DSTPORT=80 http://www.ukispcourtorders.co.uk/?JNI_URL=sci-hub.st/&JNI_R...

slothtrop 5y ago

Shows you where their priorities lie, protecting wealthy interests.

dukeofdoom 5y ago
Common people on the right now distrust the justice department and the courts as much as the people on the left.

sonicggg 5y ago

Are they looking for people outside Russia that may be helping her? There's not much they can do while she's living there.

breck 5y ago
Hey FBI, I've emailed her my support. And I'm a U.S. Citizen. I have great respect for the FBI and law enforcement in general, but on this particular issue you can go fuck yourselves. Going after a woman fighting to ensure all people, rich and poor, have access to the world's scientific information. That is a slap in the face to the American ideals of liberty and the sacrifices that tens of millions of freedom fighting Americans have made for centuries. Open your eyes.
- Dah00n 5y ago
  (Sorry this sounds harsh but im using your words here.) If you believe America have true "ideals of liberty" and the million of Americans who have died in wars "fought for freedom" I think it is yourself that need to "open your eyes".
  - breck 5y ago
    I will not argue your point that there have always been many people from American who have not embodied the American ideals. However, there have been plenty that have. And millions more come here from countries all around the world to continue building that great future. Ideals like: "all people are created equal" "government of the people, by the people, for the people" "Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," "An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."
    - breck 5y ago
      The bigger point is that there are few countries in the world where I can say "on this particular issue you can go fuck yourselves" to the top law enforcement agency and actually have a % chance of not being shot or put behind bars for it. America ain't perfect, but I've been to about 40 countries and if I had to choose, I'd bet on America 10/10 times.

periheli0n 5y ago

I'm somewhat positively surprised that there was a notice at all. This means that even non-US citizens enjoy some rights for being informed about data sharing. Silver lining.

rusk 5y ago
A nice side benefit of Europeans insisting on theirs!

dukeofdoom 5y ago

For some reason I thought iCloud was encrypted in such a way that only the user could gain access. Apparently this is not the case. FBI was able to access even Rudy Giuliani's iCloud for over a year, while he defended Trump as his lawyer. With no repercussions for doing so. https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/lawyer-feds-got-rudy-icloud-023335029.html https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/lawyer-feds-got-rudy-iclou...

rtx 5y ago
Who are they loyal too.

haxiomic 5y ago

Science Publisher Elsevier's reported profit margin is 38%, compared to Apple's 21% – there's lot of cash at stake for them and a big warchest to defend it For anyone looking to understand the background on the science publishing industry, how it ended up this way and why they will fight Sci-Hub so aggressively, I found this discussion really informative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PriwCi6SzLo&t=8s&ab_channel=MedlifeCrisis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PriwCi6SzLo&t=8s&ab_channel=...

ma2rten 5y ago
I'm wondering why it's only 38%. They charge a lot and mostly work with volunteers. It should not cost 62% of what they charge to run a website to host some pdfs.
- haxiomic 5y ago
  It's certainly more tax efficient to reduce your reported profits by finding ways to bury revenue This is the best breakdown I can find on their parent company RELX: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/RELX/relx/cash-flow-statement https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/RELX/relx/cash-flo...
- r_singh 5y ago
  They invest in making clinic decision support software to make research accessible to doctors, etc (it’s practically also making decisions for them at times). Source - have attended an Elsevier CDSS Sales presentation for HCPs
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  The rest might be laundered somehow.
- 8note 5y ago
  Likely some other company in the Cayman islands owns their intellectual property, and they they pay a good portion of their revenue to license it.
- cbkeller 5y ago

kingsuper20 5y ago

Given the provenance of most (all?) of the material on Sci-Hub, the copyright issues here seem laughable to me. Fruitless speculation about the FBI aside, you do have to wonder about the future of IP generally in the world. There's a sort of evolutionary pressure going on right now between different countries' approach to the matter and I can't say that the US-style rules will hold (or more realistically, be imposed).

jMyles 5y ago
It seems so absolutely obvious that a jurisdiction adopting a "there is no such thing as IP" approach will have a huge advantage. What's the reason this hasn't happened?
- layoutIfNeeded 5y ago
  Have you heard about a country called “China”?
- SirSourdough 5y ago
  I mean, that’s pretty much China’s position with regards to other countries IP as I understand it. There’s just a lot of power still held by the nations that do support a US-style approach to IP, so many countries have incentive not to ignore IP laws.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    IIRC, even they have been forced to increase enforcement of western IP rights over the last decade, because US has been pressuring them to (back before Trump and the whole trade war thing). This is a generally applicable answer: IP rights hold power worldwide mostly because the no.1 country that wants them has military and economic dominance over most of the planet.
    - arp242 5y ago
      Chinese companies file a huge amount of patents at the US patent office; 20 years ago, when they didn't have many of their own patents, it didn't make much sense to enforce foreign patents in their own country. But now that China has its own large patent portfolio abroad, it makes a lot more sense to cooperate so they can enforce these patents, too.

tandav 5y ago

“What Happens on your iPhone, Stays on your iPhone” - they said https://i.imgur.com/Dfk34yM.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Dfk34yM.jpg

daemoon 5y ago
Thats why they said that and not “What is on your iCloud, stays on your iCloud”
- laurent92 5y ago
  A lot of people have porn on their phone, and none would be able to prove its provenance. I wonder if one day Apple will be required to detect all underage model photos and delete the person’s entire Apple account.
  - Dah00n 5y ago
    I think it more likely Apple would ban porn "to protect the user" if anti-porn became more normal.
- beermonster 5y ago
  I said, "Hey, you, get off of my cloud Hey, you, get off of my cloud Hey, you, get off of my cloud Don't hang around 'cause two's a crowd On my cloud, baby"
bilbo0s 5y ago
it does. Unless you tell your iPhone to send everything you have to Amazon, or Dropbox, or iCloud, or Google, or Facebook, or Backblaze, or [insert cloud service subject to Chinese, EU, or US law here].
- hu3 5y ago
  or iCloud
- uo21tp5hoyg 5y ago

xNeil 5y ago

I'm not sure I understand the concept of paid access to scientific research, so I'd be grateful if someone with more knowledge of the topic could explain it to me. Governments fund universities, people donate large amounts of money to universities, and a large portion of the population has student debt because of how expensive tuition is. Why are they charging for access to research at these institutions then?

boomboomsubban 5y ago
You'd think its because peer review costs money, but they are largely unpaid for that work. So, there's no real answer beyond "capitalism."
- cyrksoft 5y ago
  What's exactly capitalistic about this? They charge for something they have no property or own. In my experience (and every researcher I know does this) researchers have their own websites where they publish a free pdf version of the research (without the format of the published paper, just a simpler pdf version) or even email it to you if you ask them to (those without a website, for example). I am not sure what exactly is "capitalism" about these journals.
  - rusk 5y ago
    > What's exactly capitalistic about this? Squeezing as much profit as possible for shareholders while externalising costs. It’s a poster child when you think about it!
  - 13415 5y ago
    They charge shitloads of money to universities for accessing their journals, these fees are so high that e.g. our university is very picky about which "packet" they buy and limit them to institutions on a case-by-case basis. The copies on the author's pages and in open repositories are obliged to be pre-publication drafts, so you cannot cite them. In fact, under control of large publishers journals have become fairly inventive about making pre-publication manuscripts unusable. For instance, I recently published in a prestigious journal that had an online editing system so that all final revisions stayed in the system - no author copy of any kind, every proof marked with author name and large watermarks -, and they made lots of small, sometimes unnecessary changes in the very last editing step. They also don't paginate the final versions that are published online first, so you can only know the real final pagination a year or so after the first version has been published online.

tyingq 5y ago

I imagine Kazakhstan will be less than cooperative with similar requests. Though I'd be terrified to travel if I were her now.

ur-whale 5y ago

Your tax dollar at work.

whatever1 5y ago

Where can I file for my damages as a reviewer? I have lost more than 2000 hours reviewing papers for for-profit publishers and they never gave me a single penny. edit: Heck many of them they did not even give me free access to their journal to check references from the papers I was reviewing for them. I had to rely on SciHub to do so.

michaf 5y ago
Your comment brings focus to the question of why reviewers agree to do these unpaid reviews in the first place. I assume your comment is in jest, and you were fully aware of the unpaid nature of the work. But what was your motivation to do it anyway and spend 2000 hours on it?
- matthewdgreen 5y ago
  This is like asking an open source maintainer what their motive was to contribute to an important piece of software, since it’s going to be hosted on a for-profit entity like GitHub. The motive is that reviewing is necessary to make science work (and secondarily it’s required for promotions etc.) The problem in this setting is that Elsevier is part of the equation and demands copyright ownership, which makes it much worse than hosting on something GitHub. Unfortunately “just stop contributing” isn’t a good answer, because that would throw out the baby with the bath water, and scientists care very deeply about the baby.
  - whatever1 5y ago
    Which was kinda ok, until the moment they started going after the people who are creating the Journals' IP and value / reputation.
- jhrmnn 5y ago
  When I do peer review, I don’t think of it as providing free service to the publisher, but as providing free service to the scientific community. I’m indirectly paid to do so by my employer. IMO employers of scientists should strike deals with publishers to get compensation for peer review from them.

cblconfederate 5y ago

15-20 years and science still hasn't solved the publishing problem. Shameful, or a sign of times

periheli0n 5y ago
Publishing is not the problem since we have the internet. The problem is the botched science career system, how performance of academics/researchers is evaluated, how anybody beneath the tenured academic is exploited. Publishing is just a decoy from this much larger problem.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  By publishing i meant editing, which is the only bit missing. How hard is it for major research associations to create publicly funded editorial boards to coordinate the (already free) authorship and reviewing
  - periheli0n 5y ago
    They are doing this, and they then team up with for-profit publishers to create a journal. Except for the "publicly funded" bit. I am not aware of public funds that would be available for editorial boards created by science organisations.

crazypython 5y ago

Finally, news about a hacker on Hacker News! If you are a hacker, you: - Mistrust authority - Promote decentralization - Share knowledge - Write open-source software - Maintain the infrastructure - Serve humanity - Are curious http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

danuker 5y ago
Thank you for linking the classic catb pages!
crumbshot 5y ago
By her own words, in creating and maintaining Sci-Hub, Elbakyan was driven by communist ideals: https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc850001 https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc850001 https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc920674 https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc920674 Interesting to observe how it overlaps with this conception of the hacker spirit. If only the world had many more Alexandra Elbakyans, and fewer Elseviers. Humanity as a whole would be a lot better off without the capitalists ruining everything with their insatiable greed.
- generalizations 5y ago
  Yeah, like that horrible capitalist company that funded the research lab which invented the transistor, Unix and C. We'd be so much better off without it out its 'capitalist, profit-driven creations'. (AT&T, Bell labs) /s
  - crumbshot 5y ago
    Despite your unnecessary sarcasm, this is actually a good example, seeing as the company was eventually destroyed by the US government for abusing its monopoly position. They did indeed fund a highly successful research centre, but - importantly to its success - one that wasn't run with the same ideals as its parent. It wasn't Bell Labs itself that endeavoured to monopolise an entire industry to the point where the government had to intervene.

xvilka 5y ago

Apart from the solving problem with paywall, Sci-Hub UX is 1000x times better than official journals. It's basically a Google of scientific articles today.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Iv 5y ago

Alexandra Elbakyan is a perfect example of someone who deserves a presidential pardon.

libeclipse 5y ago

Apparently Sci-Hub has paused uploading new papers to the site: https://www.reddit.com/r/scihub/comments/lofj0r/announcement_scihub_has_been_paused_no_new/ https://www.reddit.com/r/scihub/comments/lofj0r/announcement...

periheli0n 5y ago

I don't really get this whole frenzy about copyrighted papers. Why not just ask the authors for a copy? Most will happily share.

Dah00n 5y ago
Because the authors are not allowed to share. If they do they are in breach of contract.
- periheli0n 5y ago
  Authors can always privately share their paper.
  - Dah00n 5y ago
    It is not allowed by many (most?) contracts to share papers so while they can it is still breaking a contract they signed.
CRConrad 5y ago
Because A) that in itself shows that the whole rigmarole of ostensibly assigning sole copyright to these "journals" is a ridiculously unnecessary charade, and B) Where are you going to get their contact information from? There would need to be aome centralised registry to connect scientific subjects to author details, Idunno, like some kind of... "Journal" or something? C) And if you're already going to such a place anyway, then the actual content of the articles could also be there for everyone to read directly, without having to bother the authors with correspondence. What you're defending is a humongous stupid Rube Goldberg boondoggle.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

boramalper 5y ago

What I find the most fascinating is that a single person, possibly with the help of a few select others, is able to curate, index, host, and serve 85% of scholarly literature[0] which otherwise would be inaccessible to many. 80 million papers are available on Sci-Hub to its half a million daily users.[1] That is around 80 TB of data, and 2 TB of daily outbound traffic.[2] Given the fact that Sci-Hub has achieved all those whilst being forced to operate under the radar, I have massive respect for Elbakyan first and then all the others that have helped it survive. Not only Sci-Hub is an undeniable disruption, but also an amazing technical feat that many startups would envy. [0]: https://greenelab.github.io/scihub-manuscript/ https://greenelab.github.io/scihub-manuscript/ [1]: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://roskomsvoboda.org/49416/ https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https... [2]: 3 articles × each 2 MB × per 400k users ~ 2.4 TB. P.S. Seed its torrents!

gravypod 5y ago
Something that came up often when talking to people at my college was that our extremely expensive contracts with publishers/journals were to support the complex infrastructure required to maintain a service like that. We're talking multi million dollars per year per university per journal contracts. Reviewers are volunteers. Hosting costs, as shown by Sci-Hub, are negligible. How much does it cost to replicate a file system across 5 to 10 data centers, have a 10G link to each data center, and run a few nodes to serve web traffic? Probably a small fraction of the budgets we pay for journals. > P.S. Seed its torrents! I know no one will give legal advice here but: is this legal to do?
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  Seeding copyrighted content? No, not legal.
  - superkuh 5y ago
    That's true. Putting tax funded research studies behind corporate paywalls also is in many contexts and jurisdictions. But it's funny how that one doesn't ever get prosecuted.

seniorivn 5y ago

there is a recent interview with her(she rarely gives any) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG_I2QQc9Ww https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG_I2QQc9Ww SVTV channel, it's in Russian, youtube automatic subtitles are not bad, so if you must you can use them.

aerovistae 5y ago

How do they have nothing better to do than this???? Who is directing them to put resources towards this? How is protecting entrenched academic journal profits a priority for the FBI?

wellthisisgreat 5y ago

She deserves a Nobel Prize, it’s that simple

ta_ca 5y ago
but nobel prize doesn't deserve her

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

chosen1111 5y ago

OH SAY CAN YOU SEEEEEE!!

smsm42 5y ago

I remember when those broad search powers and gag warrants were fist introduced, we were told it's going to be used against terrorists, and there's no other way - national security requires it. Obviously, now national security also requires destroying SciHub. That, or we have been lied to - again, and the liars suffered zero consequences - again, so they will keep doing the same - again and again.