22 ms·

Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?

665 points by Cream-Corn-11 5y ago

dang 5y ago
Submitted URL was https://archive.ph/huNwk https://archive.ph/huNwk. It's ok to post workaround links in the thread, but please don't make them the original submission. We want the canonical URL for that.
- wrycoder 5y ago
  Good to know, thanks.
- NelsonMinar 5y ago
  The irony of needing an unlicensed copy of an article to read about a website that publishes unlicensed copies of articles.
  - qayxc 5y ago
    You can just disable JavaScript and the site works fine.
    - tyingq 5y ago
      Right-click, inspect, delete element with Javascript left on also works.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- ValentineC 5y ago
  Can we please change the headline back to the article's? I had no idea who Alexandra Elbakyan was before this, and mostly clicked through out of curiosity. I would have followed this more if I knew it was about Sci-Hub from the start.
  - dang 5y ago
    I hear you, but I think your case may actually be an argument for sticking with the title change. The original was baity and curiosity is just what we want people to click for. ("Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait" - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
Tommek 5y ago
The answer as always to those questions: No.
- asteroidbelt 5y ago
  It is called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
alpaca128 5y ago
> The website is blocked in a dozen countries, including Austria, Britain, and France. In Austria the providers do block it, but it's still reachable via the *.st TLD. Not sure if that's an official sci-hub page or not, but it works.
- pmyteh 5y ago
  It is blocked in the UK, but only using the usual 'good enough' quasi-voluntary measures that cover the bigger ISPs. It's accessible through my more hacker-friendly home broadband. Hilariously, it's also available through JANET, the British universities' networking system. So essentially every student and researcher in the country has access from work...
  - failwhaleshark 5y ago
    The bigger question is: Why promote or condone the gating of view access to published research at all? It's not okay.
    - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
      Copyright is the law of the land.
- draven 5y ago
  It's blocked at the DNS level (at least here in France, it simply does not resolve.) I switched to DNS-over-HTTP in Firefox and it works.
Jsone 5y ago
The article is blocked behind a subscription prompt for me, but it's implemented in a silly way that's trivially by-passable. It's just some js code that checks if you've scrolled past a limit and scrolls you back to the top if so. Anything that removes js from the content defeats it, including Firefox's built-in Reader View.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  most paywalls are bypassed with * {overflow: auto; position: relative; }
  - arp242 5y ago
    Disabling JavaScript often works as well.
- einpoklum 5y ago
  You can just select-all on the entire text and that seems to work too (but I have EFF privacy badger so I might be cheating).
- ummonk 5y ago
  Yeah, I likewise just switched to Safari reader view.
- smsm42 5y ago
  Or go to https://archive.ph/huNwk https://archive.ph/huNwk
- schelling42 5y ago
  Like with many other sites, you can also go: right-click, Inspect element (Q), and then simply delete the whole <div> containing the prompt.
wolverine876 5y ago
What will happen to research outside wealthy institutions if Sci-Hub shuts down? Are there alternatives?
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  Many people work at home now, even if they work at wealthy institutions
  - frostburg 5y ago
    That's not really the issue. You would set up a proxy, log with your institutional account... actually even with access the sci-hub UX is vastly superior.
- dasudasu 5y ago
  Lots of people upload their research to ResearchGate (even though I really dislike the site for other reasons), make it available from their research group's web page, or in some fields upload it to ArXiv or BioRxiv. It's usually not against the terms of paywalled journals to do any of these things. Google Scholar or even the regular Google search engine can be decent at finding these PDF links. As a last resort, if you're serious about wanting to read a paper, you can contact the corresponding author, who will usually email you a copy and be glad you are interested in his/her work, though this becomes a bit impractical if you need access to multiple references.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    Good points, but there is another use case: AFAIK (and in my limited experience), much of research involves reviewing many papers, to find the right one and to glean information here and there. It's not always a hunt for one specific special paper. How is that use case addressed when the cost of finding each paper seems to be so much higher?
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  Almost all papers are legally available from the researchers’ websites anyway. I’m not sure it’s the big deal everyone makes it out to be in the first place. I very very rarely find a paper I want is paywalled in the first place.
unixhero 5y ago
How might we help her?
- failwhaleshark 5y ago
  Legal gofundme. Congress people or local representatives. Talk about it.
  - unixhero 5y ago
    They will win the court battles. There should be other strategies she can take.
- mrtksn 5y ago
  I think persistence will win this one because the moral dilemma is pretty weak here. Unlike with the software and arts, we don’t need to seek a funding model for the researchers when we take their work for free. It’s my impression that it’s a matter of adaptation before the free access becomes the norm. Therefore technical help and civil disobedience should eventually do the job. In this case, we are stealing from the CD company without actually stealing the CDs. With a path adjustment we should be able to stop stealing CDs without any monetary impact on the content creators.
  - martin1975 5y ago
    free is a flawed concept - energy and time went into publishing each paper meaning someone paid. If the authors want to give permission, then she ought to seek it for each paper she's put on her website or seek permission from whomever owns the copyright. Otherwise it's theft. And no amount of civil disobedience can justify theft.
    - mrtksn 5y ago
      The situation is closer to the people who pay for AOL dial-up in 2021 because they don’t know that they don’t need it for the broadband. Definitely some effort goes to running these companies just like keeping the dial-up lines operational. Totally not cool to steal the dial-up, what we should do is to cancel it.
leephillips 5y ago
Ms. Elbakyan attacked me rather hysterically on Twitter when she learned of an article¹ on my site that describes several methods to acquire free copies of scientific articles, including Sci-Hub. I tried to get her to tell me why she thought it was terrible of me to mention any non-Sci-Hub pathways, but her replies made less sense with each iteration. So I think that Sci-Hub has been a valuable resource, but I have concerns about its stability. [1] https://lee-phillips.org/articleAccess/ https://lee-phillips.org/articleAccess/
- pedrosorio 5y ago
  > attacked me rather hysterically on Twitter The article is not the most relevant link when claiming you were attacked "hysterically" on Twitter. If a link to the latter does not exist, preventing neutral parties from evaluating the situation, I do not see the point in leaving this comment.
- asteroidbelt 5y ago
  > Ms. Elbakyan attacked me rather hysterically on Twitter Interestingly you have shared a link to your article, but not to the Twitter thread you referenced. Which raises suspicions about you telling the truth and the full truth. > but I have concerns about its stability Just set up a mirror then.
  - leephillips 5y ago
    The account from which she attacked me is suspended, and the tweets do not show. If I linked to the thread, which I can if you insist, it will only have my side of the conversation. Those who know me also know that I am telling the truth. If you prefer to disregard what I say, that’s fine with me.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Caylio 5y ago
      If you don't link to the thread, everyone will prefer to disregard what you say.
nicolas_t 5y ago
> The website is blocked in a dozen countries, including Austria, Britain, and France. I'm deeply ashamed that my country would block sci-hub given that the current system is preventing scientific development.
- amelius 5y ago
  Scientists should put Scihub in the acknowledgements section of their papers. As in "this research would not have been possible without Scihub".
  - failwhaleshark 5y ago
    That is a genius hack. ("Genius" might be redundant.)
    - kergonath 5y ago
      That is a huge problem if you acknowledge using an illegal platform in your professional work, including for your co-authors. Almost the opposite of genius, actually.
      - wizzwizz4 5y ago
        Ah, but Sci-Hub isn't illegal. There's nothing wrong with visiting the Sci-Hub home page, nor with using it as a convenient way to access open-access papers.
        kergonath 5y ago
        Right* (depending on jurisdiction, ymmv). Getting from it articles that you cannot have otherwise is (except for the vanishingly few articles in the public domain, which are not really likely to be found on Sci-Hub anyway. I tried). Saying that the work could not have been done without it is basically admitting that you got papers outside the subscriptions of your institution. It is also against the policy of all the institutions I know, so could be grounds for termination. And again, this could apply to your co-authors as well. I am really not endorsing the subscription model, but putting something like that in your articles' acknowledgments really is not smart.
oolonthegreat 5y ago
I shudder to think what will happen if sci-hub is blocked completely. Someone should put it on the blockhain or something :)
- jmcgough 5y ago
  Before scihub, I was in a livejournal Neuroscience community that was mostly researchers - half the posts were "I don't have access to x article, can someone send me the PDF?" We need a better solution to Elsevier etc but the people who most need it (grad students living on a 30k stipend) have little power to fight things, and every reason not to stick their neck out when their future depends on publishing to paid journals.
tbabej 5y ago
I really wonder how this is going to play out. For those who don't follow the current situation with Sci-Hub, Alexandra (the creator and likely the sole operator) of Sci-Hub shut down the part of the website ("the magical proxy") that is responsible for fetching the papers that were not previously retrieved. This was done to comply with the request of the Indian court, as described in the article. As a result, any papers published in 2021 (and some of the rarer, older ones, that nobody tried to access in the past) are not retrievable by Sci-Hub. The user only gets to see a white screen. This is meant to be a temporary measure, but it's been going on since December of last year (due to various court hearing delays), and the desperation in online communities like the r/scihub subreddit has been palpable [1,2]. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/scihub/comments/o2xb57/how_do_i_even_do_research_anymore/ https://old.reddit.com/r/scihub/comments/o2xb57/how_do_i_eve... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/scihub/comments/lofj0r/announcement_scihub_has_been_paused_no_new/ https://old.reddit.com/r/scihub/comments/lofj0r/announcement...
- jorvi 5y ago
  I'm very confused, why would she ever have to comply with orders of an Indian (or indeed, US) court if she resides in Europe?
  - crazygringo 5y ago
    It's explained in the original article.
  - skissane 5y ago
    She doesn’t have to comply with the Indian court order. She chose to because she thinks she has a chance of winning the case. To her, a court ruling that SciHub is legal under Indian law would be a huge win. Obeying the court order increases the odds the court will rule in her favour. It is a calculated risk on her part.
  - tbabej 5y ago
    She did not have to, but she voluntarily chose to, in order to have a shot of winning this case. If she didn't comply with the court's orders, I assume the chances of winning would plummet. From the article: > One reason is that Elbakyan believes she has a shot at winning the case, and her odds might improve if she plays by the rules. “I want the Indian court to finally support free access to science,” she said. If that happened, it would mark a significant victory for Sci-Hub, with reverberations likely beyond India. Victory remains a longshot, but Elbakyan thinks it’s worth the hassle and expense. She didn’t even bother to contest the two lawsuits in the United States.
ajb 5y ago
Given how beneficial sci-hub is, there ought to be some way that the scientific community can formally recognise this, as a way of legitimizing her cause. Some ways I can think of: * Get her elected as rector of a university. Contraversial figures are sometimes elected as Rector, at least in the UK, because students are the electorate. However for the same reason this isn't considered especially prestigious by people who know this. * Fund and create an academic post specifically for her (Ptolomy II Professor of the ethics of copyright strikes me a a suitably biting title [1]) * Nominate her to some well known prize [1] Ptolomy II decreed that any book found in a ship in the port of Alexandria should be copied by the scribes of his library - with or without the permission of the owner. The UK actually has a similar law in that publishers are required to send copies of any book published in the UK to the British Library
- kzrdude 5y ago
  Honorary doctorate, maybe?
  - pieter_mj 5y ago
    Elbakyan's contribution to humanity is way bigger than that and cannot be overstated. An honorary doctorate from many major international universities, maybe. Her effort deserves to be rewarded with the nobel peace prize, imsvho.
    - kzrdude 5y ago
      It would be neat if she was awarded 1/2 or 1/3 of the medicine or chemistry prize for example
    - caleb-allen 5y ago
      I attempted an undergraduate degree in the US and dropped out after 2 years because I struggled in the context and hadn't learned the discipline I needed to get through each semester. Since then, I've become so enthusiastic about academia in large part because of sci-hub. For all my interests I can find papers and access them with no institutional affiliation. I've learned how I learn, gained valuable research skills, and am planning on re-applying to finish a bachelor's degree! Although I come from a place of privilege I owe a great debt to sci hub. I can't imagine how critical it is for those outside my bubble, where institutions might not have great access in the first place.
enriquto 5y ago
This is extremely infuriating. Alexandra Elbakyan has done a huge positive contribution to human civilization, even knowing that it was putting herself at personal risk. She's just 32 years old. How can we help her? Does she need money, public support, vpns in every country? Whatever she needs, mankind is indebted to her and we should help if we can. Anybody who has ever supported their research using Sci-Hub (or Library Genesis) should consider helping back. I certainly do, but I don't know how to best support her. Any suggestions? She's not very communicative lately: https://twitter.com/ringo_ring https://twitter.com/ringo_ring
- breck 5y ago
  We need to start organizing and go on the offensive: abolish copyright and patents through a constitutional amendment— http://www.breckyunits.com/the-intellectual-freedom-amendment.html http://www.breckyunits.com/the-intellectual-freedom-amendmen... If you’re wondering how to get the public to support it, we need to start spreading the truth. The opioid crisis kicked off by Purdue? Wouldn’t have happened without USPTO. Big tech monopolists? They get their monopoly power from IS laws. The list goes and on. IS laws choke the flow of information through the nervous system of the world and we feel it’s consequences all over the place.
  - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
    Linking to your own website is fine and all, but not exactly a reference. And it’s hilariously short sighted. Without patent and copywrite protections, you’ll instantly see innovation come out of places where people are paid for their work. US offloading it’s manufacturing in a short sighted move to cheap labor and head-in-sand environmental outlook - sure, let’s kill the design industries too now too. There is a problem with how papers are shared and the orgs that control archiving and release. That doesn’t mean all patents must be thrown out.
    - mbar84 5y ago
      The balance of cost and benefits is not as clear as you may think. https://questioncopyright.org/ https://questioncopyright.org/ http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm
einpoklum 5y ago
So what's the status of the legal case in India? It's been nearly a year, right? It's weird that the reporter did not find that interesting enough to discuss.
andyxor 5y ago
Help saving Scihub article collection (85M papers, 77TB) https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/nc27fv/rescue_mission_for_scihub_and_open_science_we_are/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/nc27fv/rescue_...
andyxor 5y ago
There is a rescue mission to save Scihub papers, you can help seeding the torrents https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/nc27fv/rescue_mission_for_scihub_and_open_science_we_are/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/nc27fv/rescue_...
- enriquto 5y ago
  That's great, and easy to do! I have an old NAS around, will try to set it up this week.
- bushbaba 5y ago
  Surprised nobody decided to upload them onto filecoin/ipfs. Would be a great test to a real-life use case of the decentralized web
  - andyxor 5y ago
    Yes, see this post on IPFS by /u/shrine (who started the SciHub rescue mission on Reddit) http://freeread.org/ipfs/ http://freeread.org/ipfs/
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voldacar 5y ago
Seriously, why would you make your awesome website less useful for everyone because a court in India wants you to do something? Are you Indian? Does the Indian government have some kind of authority over you? Are you combing through the laws of India to make sure you are complying with all of them? When you're operating this kind of site, why even bother acknowledging the existence of Indian courts, or any court that can't literally imprison you right now?
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
  As I recall, it was part of a strategy with the Indian courts. She thought she might win in court ultimately, and this was necessary for that outcome. Not sure what the present state of things is.
- miguelmurca 5y ago
  Read the article! > The latest lawsuit, filed in India by three academic publishers, including Elsevier, asks the High Court of Delhi to block access to Sci-Hub throughout the country. While the case is pending, the court has instructed Sci-Hub to stop uploading papers to its database. The order is not unusual; what’s surprising is that Elbakyan has complied. She has a history of ignoring legal rulings, and the Indian court has no power over Sci-Hub’s activities in other countries. So why has she chosen, at this moment, to give in? > One reason is that Elbakyan believes she has a shot at winning the case, and her odds might improve if she plays by the rules. “I want the Indian court to finally support free access to science,” she said. If that happened, it would mark a significant victory for Sci-Hub, with reverberations likely beyond India. Victory remains a longshot, but Elbakyan thinks it’s worth the hassle and expense.
  - voldacar 5y ago
    Yeah I get that but the what is the upside to winning exactly? You continue doing exactly what you did? It just seems completely irrational
    - pessimizer 5y ago
ivoras 5y ago
What about China? It's famously irreverent towards western-style copyright, seems like it could (well, it's a difficult "it", granted) score some brownie points by making a mirror which is accessible both within and without their great firewall.
- phone8675309 5y ago
  This could be a big competitiveness advantage for China in two major ways: 1) there is a large contingent of Chinese nationals studying abroad, and them having access to SciHub makes it easier for them to be accustomed to it should they return to China to research there and 2) it would give China metrics on what papers are looked up and by who (sometimes down to the institution level), which might help them find high impact places to build upon research that other people might not have thought of.
- manquer 5y ago
  Not officially. China is also signatory for various intellectual property laws etc. They just turn a blind eye towards piracy when it suits them. Indian courts on other hand have in the past taken public decisions in the favour of common good, like with pharmaceutical parents recently. A victory here won't solve everything, but it is a start. Developing world is where the licensing fees are impossibly expensive for even universities. Perhaps an Indian precedent would help in other countries.
Simulacra 5y ago
FWIW I think she's a folk hero who is doing a lot of good.
efitz 5y ago
I really think that every government should pass laws that require no-charge access to any research that is paid for in whole or part by that government, and FRAND licensing of patents resulting from such research. The idea of private companies rent-seeking on publicly funded research is one of the worst forms of crony capitalism.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
Is injecting malware into PDFs still a thing? If so, it could be a national security matter to give people access via a trusted source so they don’t have to go to a grey market to get their research papers. And I’ll just +1 here that even when I did have access through university, the flow for logging into elsevier was like 8 clicks, and then after finding the paper, the button to download and read it was hidden on the side as an image-button, no alt or title text. Just an image with the word “download pdf” So yeah, I went to sci-hub every time.
- lima 5y ago
  > Is injecting malware into PDFs still a thing? Nope. Most people read PDFs inside the browser, with the same sandbox protections as other web content.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
    IIRC Firefox uses a JavaScript based PDF reader (pdf.js), but Chrome/Chromium uses a native library (PDFium). Both have had exploits in the past, but I would trust the pdf.js approach more.
  - cf141q5325 5y ago
    Sandboxes can be escaped from.
    - faeyanpiraat 5y ago
      You can only get guaranteed protection from malware infections through the internet if you turn off your machine. Even then there might be some remote management exploits which would work on turned off machines, so unplug the cables aswell.
      - cf141q5325 5y ago
        Thats not a reason to fudge with the definitions. The existence of sandboxes doesnt mean there are no more pdf exploits. There still are and sandboxes dont mitigate it entirely. There is also more ways then just turning off your machine. Its needlessly oversimplifying complex topics. Topics that are very interesting and have severe implications. Especially if we are talking about state level espionage. So in short, no you are wrong. PDF exploits are still a thing. You made unjustified assumptions. Reading my post it sounds confrontational. Thats not my intent.
chaps 5y ago
It's ironic and frustrating that the site requires you to sign in to read the article...
- smsm42 5y ago
  It kinda does but kinda doesn't. It puts up a banner to block you reading without registering, but it's pretty easy to remove it from the page if you're comfortable with Chrome's DevTools. Also, https://archive.ph/huNwk https://archive.ph/huNwk
esrh 5y ago
Something I've always wondered is why Alexandra put her name and identity out there. Would it not have been easier to remain anonymous?
- crumbshot 5y ago
  Was her identity well-known before the Elsevier court case, where she was named? I thought the publicity for her efforts was made after this, in English language media anyway. Though perhaps I am misremembering the order of events.
  - DominikPeters 5y ago
    According to pushshift, her name first appears in a reddit comment in December 2014: https://www.reddit.com/r/libgen/comments/2m2m1p/libgen_needs_donations_for_a_new_server/cmirjkt/ https://www.reddit.com/r/libgen/comments/2m2m1p/libgen_needs... The Sci-Hub wikipedia article first appeared in October 2015, already mentioning her name. The Elsevier complaint in NY is from June 2015: https://torrentfreak.com/images/elsevier-complaint.pdf https://torrentfreak.com/images/elsevier-complaint.pdf
- malwarebytess 5y ago
  Because Alexandra created sci-hub to open access to science. It was a political act. She was not ashamed, she wanted people to pay attention. Perhaps she was naive in thinking that removing barriers to science and knowledge would trump middle-men's greed and profit.
eruci 5y ago
The article about the pirate queen is behind a paywall. The irony.
- umanwizard 5y ago
  Not really. One can support paying for journalism but not scientific articles (because the latter are typically funded other than by journal access fees, meaning journals are engaged in pure rent-seeking).
deleted 5y ago
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stereoradonc 5y ago
One straightforward way is to support many private Telegram groups popping up to support academicians. SciHub was a juicy target. When you scatter the users in other domains, they will regroup and be harder to track. Good luck to the scientific publishers. You can expend any resources to track users across the Internet.
ricardobeat 5y ago
How ironic that the news site where this is published does not allow me to read it unless I subscribe.
- Anunayj 5y ago
  Haha well yup.
jerrysievert 5y ago
Am I the only one that finds it apropos that this article is login-blocked?
cantrevealname 5y ago
Anyone remember Napster? There were extremely obscure musical recordings that were instantly found on Napster that are impossible to find even today. It took a long time for anyone to rebuild that data to the level of usefulness that Napster had. If Sci-Hub is forced to shut down due to legal pressure, technical problems, running out of money, or the founder losing interest, it would take a long time for anyone to duplicate Sci-Hub if they started from zero. I think a good way to keep the cause alive is to backup or mirror the 85,483,811 papers hosted on Sci-Hub. That is, if she's willing to allow it (maybe it's already being done, but how widely?). In the case of Sci-Hub, you'd need between 85 and 850 TB for each backup or mirror depending on whether the average paper size is 1 MB or 10 MB.
- hobom 5y ago
  I think there was some reddit data hoarder initiative that did that a few months ago.
- vb6sp6 5y ago
  Napster was ok. Oink on the other hand...
  - Cyph0n 5y ago
    Or its spiritual successor, What.cd
    - omega3 5y ago
      The closure of what.cd should be up there with the burning of the library of Alexandria.
- twobitshifter 5y ago
  Isn’t there a torrent available? I thought I had heard that scihub is immortal because of torrented copies.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
hirundo 5y ago
Prometheus, Titan god of fire, was sentenced by Zeus to eternal torture. An eagle ate his liver every day and it grew back overnight to be eaten again. The Modern Prometheus, Victor Frankenstein, didn't end well either, dying of the arctic cold while chasing his monster. I wish Ms Elbakyan, our Even More Modern Prometheus, a kinder fate. But clearly it's a high risk job.
- sepin4 5y ago
  Knowledge is power and no one entity powerful enought likes to have it flowing freely. It would become free at about the same time the monetary system becomes obsolete, in other words never. That doesn't mean that the opposition to the powerful should stop and that is what Sci-Hub is.
  - FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
    > flowing freely Another reference to Saraswati.
- FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
  I also enjoyed the implication in the article that she is an avatar of Saraswati. But you're right, she faces risk, which the Prometheus story, while overused, better captures. Her name Alexandra also brings to mind the Library of Alexandria, which is a happy coincidence. And as for risk, we also remember her predecessor, Aaron Swartz.
bambam24 5y ago
Why scammy website like this which ask people to pay is allowed ?
cratermoon 5y ago
Some of the articles on sci-hub are so old that their copyright has expired, yet there's often no other source where you can find them without having to pay. I get that hosting and bandwidth cost money, but not $30 US per article money. Aaron Swartz died for free access to research. Eight years later, Elbakyan continues his work.
okareaman 5y ago
Someone has a mirror of this site I hope
ordu 5y ago
The clash of cultures. Russians treat law as something made just for a show. It is like "Any adult State must have Law, so Russian government learned them letters from alphabet to write Law", but no one really bothered with Law, because if government employee decided to charge you, he'd find a way. If he decided to not charge you, then he wouldn't do it. There are incentives to not break law in an obvious and showy manner, because the government might see it as an insult, it might provoke it. No point to attract an attention of the government. But nevertheless if one breaks law without inflicting damages to innocent, he/she is a candidate to a title of a national hero. Government structures are not innocent by definition, people who exploit proletariat also are not innocent (though there might be exceptions). In a short it is a Soviet mindset rooted in a mindset of serfdom before Soviets. On the other side is European and American culture with the rule of law, which (from Russian point of view) naively believes that law has something to do with fairness. If Putin was a president of USA, he'd now made long speeches about intervention of wicked Russian culture attacking Traditional Western Values and diluting proud Western Academic Culture. And something about spirituality. And he'd made laws treating students with a prison for using sci-hub. Prison boosts spirituality and teaches to prefer spiritual over materialistic. Real USA presidents are not much fun in this regard. Even Trump.
wydfre 5y ago
All Elsevier has done is slow accelerationsism - proving that there are those among us who would rather slow down time to reach a predetermined goal, instead of letting a social network interact with itself and knowledge at such a fast rate it cannot be predicted. There are those who wish for accelerationism at any cost, cosmists who believe in a future at any cost, and terrans, who want only a future that only their secret committee has agreed upon.
musicale 5y ago
> “I thought Sci-Hub would become legal in a couple of years,” she said. “When the laws are obviously in the way of scientific development, they should be canceled.” Pretty much this. Elbakyan: builds library of Alexandria. Elsevier et al.: tries to burn it down.
- toto444 5y ago
  When you think about it the legality of Uber or AirBnB was not so obvious from the start and still isn't. Maybe she thought Sci-Hub would have the same path.
  - stared 5y ago
    Sadly, it has little to due with public good and a lot with funds and lawyers and PR.
dcdc123 5y ago
Anyone have a non-paywalled link?
ramraj07 5y ago
Did no one read the article? The answer to the question in the title is the same answer for all questions in article titled: No. Looks like she's doing just fine and trying to see if she can actually win the case in India, and if not she'll still be fine. Of course she probably can't leave Russia ever, but it looks like she knew that a long time back and nothing about that has changed.
pleaser 5y ago
https://archive.is/huNwk https://archive.is/huNwk
djohnston 5y ago
She is a hero. Brave, outgunned, and fighting to the end.
shp0ngle 5y ago
I don't understand how the header follows from the article? She seems to be fine. She decided to fight the case in India, on her own, because she thinks she can win it.
kirillzubovsky 5y ago
Could someone with knowledge of the matter explain why scientists still publish to these journals, and still sign up for access? It seems like as long as every university in the world can just switch to a blog a do away with publications, they'd save a lot of money, improve science, and reduce complexity overnight. Why are paid journals still a thing?
- krastanov 5y ago
  It is slowly happening, but the inertia is a significant impediment. Every scientists agrees that open access is the way to go. But it takes a decade or two to create the "social proof" that your new community journal is indeed one of high standards. If you already know that the editors of your goto journal have high professional standards, you do not want to potentially waste time and risk your reputation on supporting a community journal. It is a social problem, not a technical one. Usually solved by getting all the luminaries of the field to be editors for your new community journal (which is a tall order).
  - andi999 5y ago
    One problem is that open access journals get paid by the author. So all so called predatory journals (not doing peer review, just taking the money and publishing the paper) are open access. Recently there was some hysteria about this, even if you publish by accident in one of those journals your career takes a very big dent.
    - krastanov 5y ago
      It seems reasonable to me to pay a small one-time publication fee for an open access journal, to cover clerical and typesetting work (professional typesetting is important and expensive). Predatory journals exist and would exist independently of what the best practices of good journals are. I have received plenty of emails inviting me to submit work to predatory journals, but their low quality and lack of peer review and general ethics is pretty obvious and they are easy to avoid. They feel more like a spammy annoyance than a real threat.
wtmt 5y ago
No, she’s not in real trouble this time. What seems to be in trouble is getting new papers on to Sci-Hub and it becoming a little bit less relevant over time. The courts here in India are notoriously slow on many cases. Depending on luck, the hearings don’t even start for a long time after an initial notice is sent to defendants. If the publishers are able to push the court for an earlier hearing, we’ll know how soon Sci-Hub can get back on track (surely she’s not going to stop maintaining the site and stop uploading new papers regardless of how the case turns out). I don’t think the publishers would be content with just new papers not being uploaded. If the case drags on, the backlog of newer papers to upload may become an immense effort that may create some “holes” in the data archive. I just hope the court decides sooner and we can get on with Sci-Hub growing. P.S.: This link shared in another comment worked for me without any CAPTCHA prompts - https://archive.ph/huNwk https://archive.ph/huNwk
- jacobolus 5y ago
  > getting new papers on to Sci-Hub and it becoming a little bit less relevant over time Sci-Hub is just as relevant as ever. What has happened is that paywalled papers published in 2021 are losing a substantial proportion of their readers and potential citations, and their future impact will be depressed compared to papers from previous years. Even when Sci-Hub starts adding papers again, there may be a significant permanent effect. Unestablished researchers publishing important early-career papers in paywalled journals are getting harmed.
  - marcus_holmes 5y ago
    > Unestablished researchers publishing important early-career papers in paywalled journals are getting harmed. I'm always amazed at the lack of will to change what everyone agrees is a problem.
    - Beldin 5y ago
      It has little to do with will, and much more with building a scientific career. Unless you meant that the way academia is structured is the problem here. Because it is and it leads to these excesses. Publishing, itself an acknowledged problem, is being addressed. But slowly, very slowly. Because the incentives in academia do not point to risk taking.
1cvmask 5y ago
Anyone here know Indian law and how it operates in real life? Why is she bullish on potentially winning the case? Is there a law in India that she is counting on? Or as I suspect she is counting on a sympathetic judge who might rule in her favor by finding some precedent from around the world. If say she does win how would the appeals process work?
- ahiknsr 5y ago
  > Why is she bullish on potentially winning the case? Is there a law in India that she is counting on? Or as I suspect she is counting on a sympathetic judge who might rule in her favor by finding some precedent from around the world. Yes. Indian courts have ruled that photocopying books isn’t copyright violation, i assume we can expect a similar judgement for copying research papers. from https://www.indialegallive.com/cover-story-articles/il-feature-news/photocopying-isnt-copyright-violation/ https://www.indialegallive.com/cover-story-articles/il-featu... "Copyright, specially in literary works, is thus not an inevitable, divine, or natural right that confers on authors the absolute ownership of their creations. It is designed rather to stimulate activity and progress in the arts for the intellectual enrichment of the public. Copyright is intended to increase and not to impede the harvest of knowledge. It is intended to motivate the creative activity of authors and inventors in order to benefit the public."
  - akdor1154 5y ago
    > "Copyright, specially in literary works, is thus not an inevitable, divine, or natural right that confers on authors the absolute ownership of their creations. It is designed rather to stimulate activity and progress in the arts for the intellectual enrichment of the public. Copyright is intended to increase and not to impede the harvest of knowledge. It is intended to motivate the creative activity of authors and inventors in order to benefit the public." Jesus, what a beautiful opinion from the Delhi High Court. Go India.
rhn_mk1 5y ago
Clickbaity title, there's nothing new or timely in this article about her "trouble". It's recounting how she's under no new trouble actually.
Aissen 5y ago
It's a nice summary of the current situation, but I was a bit disappointed to find no new information.
kzrdude 5y ago
We can say here that entrepreneurs in Russia - like Alexandra Elbakyan - have certain possibilities that other's don't have! That's awesome. And SV people have something to be jealous of - something they couldn't pull off. I hope she pulls it off. Different possibilities in different legal spaces. Any others like that, that you can think of?
- Naracion 5y ago
  I believe Switzerland has been regarded a tax haven for many years, allowing financial institutions to do business in ways that might be considered unscrupulous otherwise. It is up to argument whether this is good or bad for society (personally I veer towards bad, but that's because I'm not on the winning side and it's a way for the extremely rich to evade taxes). I also know of several seed boxes to have servers in Switzerland, but my knowledge in both of these matters is rather dated. If somebody else has updated info on these matters I'd love to learn more.
NmAmDa 5y ago
I am really grateful for Sci-hub and don't think I would have done my MS without it being existed. No university even in the US (Except mayb4 levy schools) could have granted me access to all the papers I needed. I hope she will get her first win in the Indian court so that it gets back to add new papers and advance science and help students as it used to be for the last decade.
eplanit 5y ago
Off topic, but she looks like a close cousin to Greta Thunberg. Related in ideology if not genetically.
nickdothutton 5y ago
Scientific publishing’s Napster moment approaches? Although it’s worth remembering that ultimately Napster is no more and the music industry found a new model though another set of gatekeepers.
fserb 5y ago
I can't think of anyone who has done more for the scientific development of mankind in the last 10 years than Alexandra.
- SimbalayaShlim 5y ago
  I agree. I honestly think she deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for the contributions she has already made toward the advancement of science. Among other types of people who can nominate an individual for a Nobel (mostly elected government officials), there's also the category of: "University professors, professors emeriti and associate professors of history, social sciences, law, philosophy, theology, and religion; university rectors and university directors (or their equivalents); directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institute." (https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/peace/ https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/peace/) I do not meet that qualification. But I'd be willing to wager that at least one person frequenting this forum does. If you meet the qualifications to nominate a person for a Nobel Peace Prize, please consider nominating Alexandra. The deadline is midnight CET, Jan 31.
sat3492 5y ago
This article from Elsevier is amusing. https://www.elsevier.com/connect/allegations-linking-sci-hub-with-russian-intelligence https://www.elsevier.com/connect/allegations-linking-sci-hub... This is insult to the intelligence of the publishers.
- sat3492 5y ago
  Archive of the same article https://web.archive.org/web/20210508074419/https://www.elsevier.com/connect/allegations-linking-sci-hub-with-russian-intelligence https://web.archive.org/web/20210508074419/https://www.elsev...

665 points by Cream-Corn-11 5y ago

dang 5y ago

Submitted URL was https://archive.ph/huNwk https://archive.ph/huNwk. It's ok to post workaround links in the thread, but please don't make them the original submission. We want the canonical URL for that.

wrycoder 5y ago
Good to know, thanks.
NelsonMinar 5y ago
The irony of needing an unlicensed copy of an article to read about a website that publishes unlicensed copies of articles.
- qayxc 5y ago
  You can just disable JavaScript and the site works fine.
  - tyingq 5y ago
    Right-click, inspect, delete element with Javascript left on also works.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
ValentineC 5y ago
Can we please change the headline back to the article's? I had no idea who Alexandra Elbakyan was before this, and mostly clicked through out of curiosity. I would have followed this more if I knew it was about Sci-Hub from the start.
- dang 5y ago
  I hear you, but I think your case may actually be an argument for sticking with the title change. The original was baity and curiosity is just what we want people to click for. ("Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait" - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Tommek 5y ago

The answer as always to those questions: No.

asteroidbelt 5y ago
It is called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

alpaca128 5y ago

> The website is blocked in a dozen countries, including Austria, Britain, and France. In Austria the providers do block it, but it's still reachable via the *.st TLD. Not sure if that's an official sci-hub page or not, but it works.

pmyteh 5y ago
It is blocked in the UK, but only using the usual 'good enough' quasi-voluntary measures that cover the bigger ISPs. It's accessible through my more hacker-friendly home broadband. Hilariously, it's also available through JANET, the British universities' networking system. So essentially every student and researcher in the country has access from work...
- failwhaleshark 5y ago
  The bigger question is: Why promote or condone the gating of view access to published research at all? It's not okay.
  - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
    Copyright is the law of the land.
draven 5y ago
It's blocked at the DNS level (at least here in France, it simply does not resolve.) I switched to DNS-over-HTTP in Firefox and it works.

Jsone 5y ago

The article is blocked behind a subscription prompt for me, but it's implemented in a silly way that's trivially by-passable. It's just some js code that checks if you've scrolled past a limit and scrolls you back to the top if so. Anything that removes js from the content defeats it, including Firefox's built-in Reader View.

cblconfederate 5y ago
most paywalls are bypassed with * {overflow: auto; position: relative; }
- arp242 5y ago
  Disabling JavaScript often works as well.
einpoklum 5y ago
You can just select-all on the entire text and that seems to work too (but I have EFF privacy badger so I might be cheating).
ummonk 5y ago
Yeah, I likewise just switched to Safari reader view.
smsm42 5y ago
Or go to https://archive.ph/huNwk https://archive.ph/huNwk
schelling42 5y ago
Like with many other sites, you can also go: right-click, Inspect element (Q), and then simply delete the whole <div> containing the prompt.

wolverine876 5y ago

What will happen to research outside wealthy institutions if Sci-Hub shuts down? Are there alternatives?

cblconfederate 5y ago
Many people work at home now, even if they work at wealthy institutions
- frostburg 5y ago
  That's not really the issue. You would set up a proxy, log with your institutional account... actually even with access the sci-hub UX is vastly superior.
dasudasu 5y ago
Lots of people upload their research to ResearchGate (even though I really dislike the site for other reasons), make it available from their research group's web page, or in some fields upload it to ArXiv or BioRxiv. It's usually not against the terms of paywalled journals to do any of these things. Google Scholar or even the regular Google search engine can be decent at finding these PDF links. As a last resort, if you're serious about wanting to read a paper, you can contact the corresponding author, who will usually email you a copy and be glad you are interested in his/her work, though this becomes a bit impractical if you need access to multiple references.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  Good points, but there is another use case: AFAIK (and in my limited experience), much of research involves reviewing many papers, to find the right one and to glean information here and there. It's not always a hunt for one specific special paper. How is that use case addressed when the cost of finding each paper seems to be so much higher?
chrisseaton 5y ago
Almost all papers are legally available from the researchers’ websites anyway. I’m not sure it’s the big deal everyone makes it out to be in the first place. I very very rarely find a paper I want is paywalled in the first place.

unixhero 5y ago

How might we help her?

failwhaleshark 5y ago
Legal gofundme. Congress people or local representatives. Talk about it.
- unixhero 5y ago
  They will win the court battles. There should be other strategies she can take.
mrtksn 5y ago
I think persistence will win this one because the moral dilemma is pretty weak here. Unlike with the software and arts, we don’t need to seek a funding model for the researchers when we take their work for free. It’s my impression that it’s a matter of adaptation before the free access becomes the norm. Therefore technical help and civil disobedience should eventually do the job. In this case, we are stealing from the CD company without actually stealing the CDs. With a path adjustment we should be able to stop stealing CDs without any monetary impact on the content creators.
- martin1975 5y ago
  free is a flawed concept - energy and time went into publishing each paper meaning someone paid. If the authors want to give permission, then she ought to seek it for each paper she's put on her website or seek permission from whomever owns the copyright. Otherwise it's theft. And no amount of civil disobedience can justify theft.
  - mrtksn 5y ago
    The situation is closer to the people who pay for AOL dial-up in 2021 because they don’t know that they don’t need it for the broadband. Definitely some effort goes to running these companies just like keeping the dial-up lines operational. Totally not cool to steal the dial-up, what we should do is to cancel it.

leephillips 5y ago

Ms. Elbakyan attacked me rather hysterically on Twitter when she learned of an article¹ on my site that describes several methods to acquire free copies of scientific articles, including Sci-Hub. I tried to get her to tell me why she thought it was terrible of me to mention any non-Sci-Hub pathways, but her replies made less sense with each iteration. So I think that Sci-Hub has been a valuable resource, but I have concerns about its stability. [1] https://lee-phillips.org/articleAccess/ https://lee-phillips.org/articleAccess/

pedrosorio 5y ago
> attacked me rather hysterically on Twitter The article is not the most relevant link when claiming you were attacked "hysterically" on Twitter. If a link to the latter does not exist, preventing neutral parties from evaluating the situation, I do not see the point in leaving this comment.
asteroidbelt 5y ago
> Ms. Elbakyan attacked me rather hysterically on Twitter Interestingly you have shared a link to your article, but not to the Twitter thread you referenced. Which raises suspicions about you telling the truth and the full truth. > but I have concerns about its stability Just set up a mirror then.
- leephillips 5y ago
  The account from which she attacked me is suspended, and the tweets do not show. If I linked to the thread, which I can if you insist, it will only have my side of the conversation. Those who know me also know that I am telling the truth. If you prefer to disregard what I say, that’s fine with me.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Caylio 5y ago
    If you don't link to the thread, everyone will prefer to disregard what you say.

nicolas_t 5y ago

> The website is blocked in a dozen countries, including Austria, Britain, and France. I'm deeply ashamed that my country would block sci-hub given that the current system is preventing scientific development.

amelius 5y ago
Scientists should put Scihub in the acknowledgements section of their papers. As in "this research would not have been possible without Scihub".
- failwhaleshark 5y ago
  That is a genius hack. ("Genius" might be redundant.)
  - kergonath 5y ago
    That is a huge problem if you acknowledge using an illegal platform in your professional work, including for your co-authors. Almost the opposite of genius, actually.
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      Ah, but Sci-Hub isn't illegal. There's nothing wrong with visiting the Sci-Hub home page, nor with using it as a convenient way to access open-access papers.
      - kergonath 5y ago
        Right* (depending on jurisdiction, ymmv). Getting from it articles that you cannot have otherwise is (except for the vanishingly few articles in the public domain, which are not really likely to be found on Sci-Hub anyway. I tried). Saying that the work could not have been done without it is basically admitting that you got papers outside the subscriptions of your institution. It is also against the policy of all the institutions I know, so could be grounds for termination. And again, this could apply to your co-authors as well. I am really not endorsing the subscription model, but putting something like that in your articles' acknowledgments really is not smart.

oolonthegreat 5y ago

I shudder to think what will happen if sci-hub is blocked completely. Someone should put it on the blockhain or something :)

jmcgough 5y ago
Before scihub, I was in a livejournal Neuroscience community that was mostly researchers - half the posts were "I don't have access to x article, can someone send me the PDF?" We need a better solution to Elsevier etc but the people who most need it (grad students living on a 30k stipend) have little power to fight things, and every reason not to stick their neck out when their future depends on publishing to paid journals.

tbabej 5y ago

I really wonder how this is going to play out. For those who don't follow the current situation with Sci-Hub, Alexandra (the creator and likely the sole operator) of Sci-Hub shut down the part of the website ("the magical proxy") that is responsible for fetching the papers that were not previously retrieved. This was done to comply with the request of the Indian court, as described in the article. As a result, any papers published in 2021 (and some of the rarer, older ones, that nobody tried to access in the past) are not retrievable by Sci-Hub. The user only gets to see a white screen. This is meant to be a temporary measure, but it's been going on since December of last year (due to various court hearing delays), and the desperation in online communities like the r/scihub subreddit has been palpable [1,2]. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/scihub/comments/o2xb57/how_do_i_even_do_research_anymore/ https://old.reddit.com/r/scihub/comments/o2xb57/how_do_i_eve... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/scihub/comments/lofj0r/announcement_scihub_has_been_paused_no_new/ https://old.reddit.com/r/scihub/comments/lofj0r/announcement...

jorvi 5y ago
I'm very confused, why would she ever have to comply with orders of an Indian (or indeed, US) court if she resides in Europe?
- crazygringo 5y ago
  It's explained in the original article.
- skissane 5y ago
  She doesn’t have to comply with the Indian court order. She chose to because she thinks she has a chance of winning the case. To her, a court ruling that SciHub is legal under Indian law would be a huge win. Obeying the court order increases the odds the court will rule in her favour. It is a calculated risk on her part.
- tbabej 5y ago
  She did not have to, but she voluntarily chose to, in order to have a shot of winning this case. If she didn't comply with the court's orders, I assume the chances of winning would plummet. From the article: > One reason is that Elbakyan believes she has a shot at winning the case, and her odds might improve if she plays by the rules. “I want the Indian court to finally support free access to science,” she said. If that happened, it would mark a significant victory for Sci-Hub, with reverberations likely beyond India. Victory remains a longshot, but Elbakyan thinks it’s worth the hassle and expense. She didn’t even bother to contest the two lawsuits in the United States.

ajb 5y ago

Given how beneficial sci-hub is, there ought to be some way that the scientific community can formally recognise this, as a way of legitimizing her cause. Some ways I can think of: * Get her elected as rector of a university. Contraversial figures are sometimes elected as Rector, at least in the UK, because students are the electorate. However for the same reason this isn't considered especially prestigious by people who know this. * Fund and create an academic post specifically for her (Ptolomy II Professor of the ethics of copyright strikes me a a suitably biting title [1]) * Nominate her to some well known prize [1] Ptolomy II decreed that any book found in a ship in the port of Alexandria should be copied by the scribes of his library - with or without the permission of the owner. The UK actually has a similar law in that publishers are required to send copies of any book published in the UK to the British Library

kzrdude 5y ago
Honorary doctorate, maybe?
- pieter_mj 5y ago
  Elbakyan's contribution to humanity is way bigger than that and cannot be overstated. An honorary doctorate from many major international universities, maybe. Her effort deserves to be rewarded with the nobel peace prize, imsvho.
  - kzrdude 5y ago
    It would be neat if she was awarded 1/2 or 1/3 of the medicine or chemistry prize for example
  - caleb-allen 5y ago
    I attempted an undergraduate degree in the US and dropped out after 2 years because I struggled in the context and hadn't learned the discipline I needed to get through each semester. Since then, I've become so enthusiastic about academia in large part because of sci-hub. For all my interests I can find papers and access them with no institutional affiliation. I've learned how I learn, gained valuable research skills, and am planning on re-applying to finish a bachelor's degree! Although I come from a place of privilege I owe a great debt to sci hub. I can't imagine how critical it is for those outside my bubble, where institutions might not have great access in the first place.

enriquto 5y ago

This is extremely infuriating. Alexandra Elbakyan has done a huge positive contribution to human civilization, even knowing that it was putting herself at personal risk. She's just 32 years old. How can we help her? Does she need money, public support, vpns in every country? Whatever she needs, mankind is indebted to her and we should help if we can. Anybody who has ever supported their research using Sci-Hub (or Library Genesis) should consider helping back. I certainly do, but I don't know how to best support her. Any suggestions? She's not very communicative lately: https://twitter.com/ringo_ring https://twitter.com/ringo_ring

breck 5y ago
We need to start organizing and go on the offensive: abolish copyright and patents through a constitutional amendment— http://www.breckyunits.com/the-intellectual-freedom-amendment.html http://www.breckyunits.com/the-intellectual-freedom-amendmen... If you’re wondering how to get the public to support it, we need to start spreading the truth. The opioid crisis kicked off by Purdue? Wouldn’t have happened without USPTO. Big tech monopolists? They get their monopoly power from IS laws. The list goes and on. IS laws choke the flow of information through the nervous system of the world and we feel it’s consequences all over the place.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  Linking to your own website is fine and all, but not exactly a reference. And it’s hilariously short sighted. Without patent and copywrite protections, you’ll instantly see innovation come out of places where people are paid for their work. US offloading it’s manufacturing in a short sighted move to cheap labor and head-in-sand environmental outlook - sure, let’s kill the design industries too now too. There is a problem with how papers are shared and the orgs that control archiving and release. That doesn’t mean all patents must be thrown out.
  - mbar84 5y ago
    The balance of cost and benefits is not as clear as you may think. https://questioncopyright.org/ https://questioncopyright.org/ http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm

einpoklum 5y ago

So what's the status of the legal case in India? It's been nearly a year, right? It's weird that the reporter did not find that interesting enough to discuss.

andyxor 5y ago

Help saving Scihub article collection (85M papers, 77TB) https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/nc27fv/rescue_mission_for_scihub_and_open_science_we_are/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/nc27fv/rescue_...

andyxor 5y ago

There is a rescue mission to save Scihub papers, you can help seeding the torrents https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/nc27fv/rescue_mission_for_scihub_and_open_science_we_are/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/nc27fv/rescue_...

enriquto 5y ago
That's great, and easy to do! I have an old NAS around, will try to set it up this week.
bushbaba 5y ago
Surprised nobody decided to upload them onto filecoin/ipfs. Would be a great test to a real-life use case of the decentralized web
- andyxor 5y ago
  Yes, see this post on IPFS by /u/shrine (who started the SciHub rescue mission on Reddit) http://freeread.org/ipfs/ http://freeread.org/ipfs/

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

voldacar 5y ago

Seriously, why would you make your awesome website less useful for everyone because a court in India wants you to do something? Are you Indian? Does the Indian government have some kind of authority over you? Are you combing through the laws of India to make sure you are complying with all of them? When you're operating this kind of site, why even bother acknowledging the existence of Indian courts, or any court that can't literally imprison you right now?

NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
As I recall, it was part of a strategy with the Indian courts. She thought she might win in court ultimately, and this was necessary for that outcome. Not sure what the present state of things is.
miguelmurca 5y ago
Read the article! > The latest lawsuit, filed in India by three academic publishers, including Elsevier, asks the High Court of Delhi to block access to Sci-Hub throughout the country. While the case is pending, the court has instructed Sci-Hub to stop uploading papers to its database. The order is not unusual; what’s surprising is that Elbakyan has complied. She has a history of ignoring legal rulings, and the Indian court has no power over Sci-Hub’s activities in other countries. So why has she chosen, at this moment, to give in? > One reason is that Elbakyan believes she has a shot at winning the case, and her odds might improve if she plays by the rules. “I want the Indian court to finally support free access to science,” she said. If that happened, it would mark a significant victory for Sci-Hub, with reverberations likely beyond India. Victory remains a longshot, but Elbakyan thinks it’s worth the hassle and expense.
- voldacar 5y ago
  Yeah I get that but the what is the upside to winning exactly? You continue doing exactly what you did? It just seems completely irrational
  - pessimizer 5y ago

ivoras 5y ago

What about China? It's famously irreverent towards western-style copyright, seems like it could (well, it's a difficult "it", granted) score some brownie points by making a mirror which is accessible both within and without their great firewall.

phone8675309 5y ago
This could be a big competitiveness advantage for China in two major ways: 1) there is a large contingent of Chinese nationals studying abroad, and them having access to SciHub makes it easier for them to be accustomed to it should they return to China to research there and 2) it would give China metrics on what papers are looked up and by who (sometimes down to the institution level), which might help them find high impact places to build upon research that other people might not have thought of.
manquer 5y ago
Not officially. China is also signatory for various intellectual property laws etc. They just turn a blind eye towards piracy when it suits them. Indian courts on other hand have in the past taken public decisions in the favour of common good, like with pharmaceutical parents recently. A victory here won't solve everything, but it is a start. Developing world is where the licensing fees are impossibly expensive for even universities. Perhaps an Indian precedent would help in other countries.

Simulacra 5y ago

FWIW I think she's a folk hero who is doing a lot of good.

efitz 5y ago

I really think that every government should pass laws that require no-charge access to any research that is paid for in whole or part by that government, and FRAND licensing of patents resulting from such research. The idea of private companies rent-seeking on publicly funded research is one of the worst forms of crony capitalism.

jazzyjackson 5y ago

Is injecting malware into PDFs still a thing? If so, it could be a national security matter to give people access via a trusted source so they don’t have to go to a grey market to get their research papers. And I’ll just +1 here that even when I did have access through university, the flow for logging into elsevier was like 8 clicks, and then after finding the paper, the button to download and read it was hidden on the side as an image-button, no alt or title text. Just an image with the word “download pdf” So yeah, I went to sci-hub every time.

lima 5y ago
> Is injecting malware into PDFs still a thing? Nope. Most people read PDFs inside the browser, with the same sandbox protections as other web content.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
  IIRC Firefox uses a JavaScript based PDF reader (pdf.js), but Chrome/Chromium uses a native library (PDFium). Both have had exploits in the past, but I would trust the pdf.js approach more.
- cf141q5325 5y ago
  Sandboxes can be escaped from.
  - faeyanpiraat 5y ago
    You can only get guaranteed protection from malware infections through the internet if you turn off your machine. Even then there might be some remote management exploits which would work on turned off machines, so unplug the cables aswell.
    - cf141q5325 5y ago
      Thats not a reason to fudge with the definitions. The existence of sandboxes doesnt mean there are no more pdf exploits. There still are and sandboxes dont mitigate it entirely. There is also more ways then just turning off your machine. Its needlessly oversimplifying complex topics. Topics that are very interesting and have severe implications. Especially if we are talking about state level espionage. So in short, no you are wrong. PDF exploits are still a thing. You made unjustified assumptions. Reading my post it sounds confrontational. Thats not my intent.

chaps 5y ago

It's ironic and frustrating that the site requires you to sign in to read the article...

smsm42 5y ago
It kinda does but kinda doesn't. It puts up a banner to block you reading without registering, but it's pretty easy to remove it from the page if you're comfortable with Chrome's DevTools. Also, https://archive.ph/huNwk https://archive.ph/huNwk

esrh 5y ago

Something I've always wondered is why Alexandra put her name and identity out there. Would it not have been easier to remain anonymous?

crumbshot 5y ago
Was her identity well-known before the Elsevier court case, where she was named? I thought the publicity for her efforts was made after this, in English language media anyway. Though perhaps I am misremembering the order of events.
- DominikPeters 5y ago
  According to pushshift, her name first appears in a reddit comment in December 2014: https://www.reddit.com/r/libgen/comments/2m2m1p/libgen_needs_donations_for_a_new_server/cmirjkt/ https://www.reddit.com/r/libgen/comments/2m2m1p/libgen_needs... The Sci-Hub wikipedia article first appeared in October 2015, already mentioning her name. The Elsevier complaint in NY is from June 2015: https://torrentfreak.com/images/elsevier-complaint.pdf https://torrentfreak.com/images/elsevier-complaint.pdf
malwarebytess 5y ago
Because Alexandra created sci-hub to open access to science. It was a political act. She was not ashamed, she wanted people to pay attention. Perhaps she was naive in thinking that removing barriers to science and knowledge would trump middle-men's greed and profit.

eruci 5y ago

The article about the pirate queen is behind a paywall. The irony.

umanwizard 5y ago
Not really. One can support paying for journalism but not scientific articles (because the latter are typically funded other than by journal access fees, meaning journals are engaged in pure rent-seeking).

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stereoradonc 5y ago

One straightforward way is to support many private Telegram groups popping up to support academicians. SciHub was a juicy target. When you scatter the users in other domains, they will regroup and be harder to track. Good luck to the scientific publishers. You can expend any resources to track users across the Internet.

ricardobeat 5y ago

How ironic that the news site where this is published does not allow me to read it unless I subscribe.

Anunayj 5y ago
Haha well yup.

jerrysievert 5y ago

Am I the only one that finds it apropos that this article is login-blocked?

cantrevealname 5y ago

Anyone remember Napster? There were extremely obscure musical recordings that were instantly found on Napster that are impossible to find even today. It took a long time for anyone to rebuild that data to the level of usefulness that Napster had. If Sci-Hub is forced to shut down due to legal pressure, technical problems, running out of money, or the founder losing interest, it would take a long time for anyone to duplicate Sci-Hub if they started from zero. I think a good way to keep the cause alive is to backup or mirror the 85,483,811 papers hosted on Sci-Hub. That is, if she's willing to allow it (maybe it's already being done, but how widely?). In the case of Sci-Hub, you'd need between 85 and 850 TB for each backup or mirror depending on whether the average paper size is 1 MB or 10 MB.

hobom 5y ago
I think there was some reddit data hoarder initiative that did that a few months ago.
vb6sp6 5y ago
Napster was ok. Oink on the other hand...
- Cyph0n 5y ago
  Or its spiritual successor, What.cd
  - omega3 5y ago
    The closure of what.cd should be up there with the burning of the library of Alexandria.
twobitshifter 5y ago
Isn’t there a torrent available? I thought I had heard that scihub is immortal because of torrented copies.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

hirundo 5y ago

Prometheus, Titan god of fire, was sentenced by Zeus to eternal torture. An eagle ate his liver every day and it grew back overnight to be eaten again. The Modern Prometheus, Victor Frankenstein, didn't end well either, dying of the arctic cold while chasing his monster. I wish Ms Elbakyan, our Even More Modern Prometheus, a kinder fate. But clearly it's a high risk job.

sepin4 5y ago
Knowledge is power and no one entity powerful enought likes to have it flowing freely. It would become free at about the same time the monetary system becomes obsolete, in other words never. That doesn't mean that the opposition to the powerful should stop and that is what Sci-Hub is.
- FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
  > flowing freely Another reference to Saraswati.
FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
I also enjoyed the implication in the article that she is an avatar of Saraswati. But you're right, she faces risk, which the Prometheus story, while overused, better captures. Her name Alexandra also brings to mind the Library of Alexandria, which is a happy coincidence. And as for risk, we also remember her predecessor, Aaron Swartz.

bambam24 5y ago

Why scammy website like this which ask people to pay is allowed ?

cratermoon 5y ago

Some of the articles on sci-hub are so old that their copyright has expired, yet there's often no other source where you can find them without having to pay. I get that hosting and bandwidth cost money, but not $30 US per article money. Aaron Swartz died for free access to research. Eight years later, Elbakyan continues his work.

okareaman 5y ago

Someone has a mirror of this site I hope

ordu 5y ago

The clash of cultures. Russians treat law as something made just for a show. It is like "Any adult State must have Law, so Russian government learned them letters from alphabet to write Law", but no one really bothered with Law, because if government employee decided to charge you, he'd find a way. If he decided to not charge you, then he wouldn't do it. There are incentives to not break law in an obvious and showy manner, because the government might see it as an insult, it might provoke it. No point to attract an attention of the government. But nevertheless if one breaks law without inflicting damages to innocent, he/she is a candidate to a title of a national hero. Government structures are not innocent by definition, people who exploit proletariat also are not innocent (though there might be exceptions). In a short it is a Soviet mindset rooted in a mindset of serfdom before Soviets. On the other side is European and American culture with the rule of law, which (from Russian point of view) naively believes that law has something to do with fairness. If Putin was a president of USA, he'd now made long speeches about intervention of wicked Russian culture attacking Traditional Western Values and diluting proud Western Academic Culture. And something about spirituality. And he'd made laws treating students with a prison for using sci-hub. Prison boosts spirituality and teaches to prefer spiritual over materialistic. Real USA presidents are not much fun in this regard. Even Trump.

wydfre 5y ago

All Elsevier has done is slow accelerationsism - proving that there are those among us who would rather slow down time to reach a predetermined goal, instead of letting a social network interact with itself and knowledge at such a fast rate it cannot be predicted. There are those who wish for accelerationism at any cost, cosmists who believe in a future at any cost, and terrans, who want only a future that only their secret committee has agreed upon.

musicale 5y ago

> “I thought Sci-Hub would become legal in a couple of years,” she said. “When the laws are obviously in the way of scientific development, they should be canceled.” Pretty much this. Elbakyan: builds library of Alexandria. Elsevier et al.: tries to burn it down.

toto444 5y ago
When you think about it the legality of Uber or AirBnB was not so obvious from the start and still isn't. Maybe she thought Sci-Hub would have the same path.
- stared 5y ago
  Sadly, it has little to due with public good and a lot with funds and lawyers and PR.

dcdc123 5y ago

Anyone have a non-paywalled link?

ramraj07 5y ago

Did no one read the article? The answer to the question in the title is the same answer for all questions in article titled: No. Looks like she's doing just fine and trying to see if she can actually win the case in India, and if not she'll still be fine. Of course she probably can't leave Russia ever, but it looks like she knew that a long time back and nothing about that has changed.

pleaser 5y ago

https://archive.is/huNwk https://archive.is/huNwk

djohnston 5y ago

She is a hero. Brave, outgunned, and fighting to the end.

shp0ngle 5y ago

I don't understand how the header follows from the article? She seems to be fine. She decided to fight the case in India, on her own, because she thinks she can win it.

kirillzubovsky 5y ago

Could someone with knowledge of the matter explain why scientists still publish to these journals, and still sign up for access? It seems like as long as every university in the world can just switch to a blog a do away with publications, they'd save a lot of money, improve science, and reduce complexity overnight. Why are paid journals still a thing?

krastanov 5y ago
It is slowly happening, but the inertia is a significant impediment. Every scientists agrees that open access is the way to go. But it takes a decade or two to create the "social proof" that your new community journal is indeed one of high standards. If you already know that the editors of your goto journal have high professional standards, you do not want to potentially waste time and risk your reputation on supporting a community journal. It is a social problem, not a technical one. Usually solved by getting all the luminaries of the field to be editors for your new community journal (which is a tall order).
- andi999 5y ago
  One problem is that open access journals get paid by the author. So all so called predatory journals (not doing peer review, just taking the money and publishing the paper) are open access. Recently there was some hysteria about this, even if you publish by accident in one of those journals your career takes a very big dent.
  - krastanov 5y ago
    It seems reasonable to me to pay a small one-time publication fee for an open access journal, to cover clerical and typesetting work (professional typesetting is important and expensive). Predatory journals exist and would exist independently of what the best practices of good journals are. I have received plenty of emails inviting me to submit work to predatory journals, but their low quality and lack of peer review and general ethics is pretty obvious and they are easy to avoid. They feel more like a spammy annoyance than a real threat.

wtmt 5y ago

No, she’s not in real trouble this time. What seems to be in trouble is getting new papers on to Sci-Hub and it becoming a little bit less relevant over time. The courts here in India are notoriously slow on many cases. Depending on luck, the hearings don’t even start for a long time after an initial notice is sent to defendants. If the publishers are able to push the court for an earlier hearing, we’ll know how soon Sci-Hub can get back on track (surely she’s not going to stop maintaining the site and stop uploading new papers regardless of how the case turns out). I don’t think the publishers would be content with just new papers not being uploaded. If the case drags on, the backlog of newer papers to upload may become an immense effort that may create some “holes” in the data archive. I just hope the court decides sooner and we can get on with Sci-Hub growing. P.S.: This link shared in another comment worked for me without any CAPTCHA prompts - https://archive.ph/huNwk https://archive.ph/huNwk

jacobolus 5y ago
> getting new papers on to Sci-Hub and it becoming a little bit less relevant over time Sci-Hub is just as relevant as ever. What has happened is that paywalled papers published in 2021 are losing a substantial proportion of their readers and potential citations, and their future impact will be depressed compared to papers from previous years. Even when Sci-Hub starts adding papers again, there may be a significant permanent effect. Unestablished researchers publishing important early-career papers in paywalled journals are getting harmed.
- marcus_holmes 5y ago
  > Unestablished researchers publishing important early-career papers in paywalled journals are getting harmed. I'm always amazed at the lack of will to change what everyone agrees is a problem.
  - Beldin 5y ago
    It has little to do with will, and much more with building a scientific career. Unless you meant that the way academia is structured is the problem here. Because it is and it leads to these excesses. Publishing, itself an acknowledged problem, is being addressed. But slowly, very slowly. Because the incentives in academia do not point to risk taking.

1cvmask 5y ago

Anyone here know Indian law and how it operates in real life? Why is she bullish on potentially winning the case? Is there a law in India that she is counting on? Or as I suspect she is counting on a sympathetic judge who might rule in her favor by finding some precedent from around the world. If say she does win how would the appeals process work?

ahiknsr 5y ago
> Why is she bullish on potentially winning the case? Is there a law in India that she is counting on? Or as I suspect she is counting on a sympathetic judge who might rule in her favor by finding some precedent from around the world. Yes. Indian courts have ruled that photocopying books isn’t copyright violation, i assume we can expect a similar judgement for copying research papers. from https://www.indialegallive.com/cover-story-articles/il-feature-news/photocopying-isnt-copyright-violation/ https://www.indialegallive.com/cover-story-articles/il-featu... "Copyright, specially in literary works, is thus not an inevitable, divine, or natural right that confers on authors the absolute ownership of their creations. It is designed rather to stimulate activity and progress in the arts for the intellectual enrichment of the public. Copyright is intended to increase and not to impede the harvest of knowledge. It is intended to motivate the creative activity of authors and inventors in order to benefit the public."
- akdor1154 5y ago
  > "Copyright, specially in literary works, is thus not an inevitable, divine, or natural right that confers on authors the absolute ownership of their creations. It is designed rather to stimulate activity and progress in the arts for the intellectual enrichment of the public. Copyright is intended to increase and not to impede the harvest of knowledge. It is intended to motivate the creative activity of authors and inventors in order to benefit the public." Jesus, what a beautiful opinion from the Delhi High Court. Go India.

rhn_mk1 5y ago

Clickbaity title, there's nothing new or timely in this article about her "trouble". It's recounting how she's under no new trouble actually.

Aissen 5y ago

It's a nice summary of the current situation, but I was a bit disappointed to find no new information.

kzrdude 5y ago

We can say here that entrepreneurs in Russia - like Alexandra Elbakyan - have certain possibilities that other's don't have! That's awesome. And SV people have something to be jealous of - something they couldn't pull off. I hope she pulls it off. Different possibilities in different legal spaces. Any others like that, that you can think of?

Naracion 5y ago
I believe Switzerland has been regarded a tax haven for many years, allowing financial institutions to do business in ways that might be considered unscrupulous otherwise. It is up to argument whether this is good or bad for society (personally I veer towards bad, but that's because I'm not on the winning side and it's a way for the extremely rich to evade taxes). I also know of several seed boxes to have servers in Switzerland, but my knowledge in both of these matters is rather dated. If somebody else has updated info on these matters I'd love to learn more.

NmAmDa 5y ago

I am really grateful for Sci-hub and don't think I would have done my MS without it being existed. No university even in the US (Except mayb4 levy schools) could have granted me access to all the papers I needed. I hope she will get her first win in the Indian court so that it gets back to add new papers and advance science and help students as it used to be for the last decade.

eplanit 5y ago

Off topic, but she looks like a close cousin to Greta Thunberg. Related in ideology if not genetically.

nickdothutton 5y ago

Scientific publishing’s Napster moment approaches? Although it’s worth remembering that ultimately Napster is no more and the music industry found a new model though another set of gatekeepers.

fserb 5y ago

I can't think of anyone who has done more for the scientific development of mankind in the last 10 years than Alexandra.

SimbalayaShlim 5y ago
I agree. I honestly think she deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for the contributions she has already made toward the advancement of science. Among other types of people who can nominate an individual for a Nobel (mostly elected government officials), there's also the category of: "University professors, professors emeriti and associate professors of history, social sciences, law, philosophy, theology, and religion; university rectors and university directors (or their equivalents); directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institute." (https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/peace/ https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/peace/) I do not meet that qualification. But I'd be willing to wager that at least one person frequenting this forum does. If you meet the qualifications to nominate a person for a Nobel Peace Prize, please consider nominating Alexandra. The deadline is midnight CET, Jan 31.

sat3492 5y ago

This article from Elsevier is amusing. https://www.elsevier.com/connect/allegations-linking-sci-hub-with-russian-intelligence https://www.elsevier.com/connect/allegations-linking-sci-hub... This is insult to the intelligence of the publishers.

sat3492 5y ago
Archive of the same article https://web.archive.org/web/20210508074419/https://www.elsevier.com/connect/allegations-linking-sci-hub-with-russian-intelligence https://web.archive.org/web/20210508074419/https://www.elsev...