7 ms·

This is extremely infuriating. Alexandra Elbakyan has done a huge positive contribution to human civilization, even knowing that it was putting herself at pers

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
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    If going patent-free is good enough for the transistor… Do you have any rebuttal to parent’s points on Purdue and tech monopolies?
    - TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
      Yes, of course. Do you really think drug cartels need the IPTO? Or that the opioid crisis couldn't possibly have happened if the opioids had been generics? Who has an IP monopoly on alcohol production? Is alcohol addition a huge problem, or not? Why do you believe tech monopolies rely specifically on patents and not on massive spending power, political leverage, and other influencing mechanisms? Do you not understand that if you have the spending power, you can open-source your code and IP without even remotely endangering that monopoly? The reality is that patents are a relatively tiny element in cost of entry to markets. It's honestly baffling why the anti-copyright crowd believes removing patents and copyright will be some kind of magic bus ride to utopia, when there is no rational reason whatsoever to believe that. And none of this has much to do with making scientific papers public domain - because that isn't even the same class of issue.
      - breck 5y ago
        > Do you really think drug cartels need the IPTO? The legal ones do, absolutely. > Or that the opioid crisis couldn't possibly have happened if the opioids had been generics? "get an audience for our patent infringement suits so that we are feared as a tiger with claws, teeth and balls, and build some excitement with prescribers that OxyContin Tablets is the way to go." Richard Sackler in a 1996 email. I do not see OxyContin situations in a world with intellectual freedom, no. No government enforced monopoly profits, no massive incentive to overprescribe and lie. No copyright, and you get far more honest media, education, and healthcare industries. > Who has an IP monopoly on alcohol production? Is alcohol addition a huge problem, or not? Maybe it's far more of a problem that is generally known, but that truth is not made apparent because we don't have true freedom of the press b/c of copyright laws. > Why do you believe tech monopolies rely specifically on patents On patents and copyrights. If we were to declare tomorrow that search engines did not have to respect copyright law, we would see far better search engines than Google in a year or less. > The reality is that patents are a relatively tiny element in cost of entry to markets. Patents deter a huge number of startups from forming. Nearly every successful startup I know of gets targetted by patent trolls, and must decide to play that game and go along with the system. This is very discouraging to a huge number of innovators, especially in critical fields like chip design. > It's honestly baffling why the anti-copyright crowd believes removing patents and copyright will be some kind of magic bus ride to utopia, when there is no rational reason whatsoever to believe that. Not a magical bus ride to utopia, but a doubling to perhaps 10x increase in human productivity and equality, yes.
- nhooyr 5y ago
  What is IS law?
  - greyface- 5y ago
    It seems to stand for "Intellectual Slavery": https://hn.algolia.com/?q=by%3Abreck%20%22intellectual%20slavery%22&type=all https://hn.algolia.com/?q=by%3Abreck%20%22intellectual%20sla...
- syshum 5y ago
  For the US, the fast path would be to push for all Federally Funded Research to be published under a Public Domain License, no different than NASA Images, recordings, or other public agency created research. We need to extend those provisions to include all research that gets federal tax money
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ta988 5y ago
    Thod is already true for NIH funded research after a one year embargo. But yes I would support that. Authors have to sign away the rights to their own texts and pictures to publishers! not just sharing rights like you do when putting a.picture on twitter, no... giving your full rights...
danuker 5y ago
> I don't know how to best support her. Any suggestions? My guess would be to donate to her. Near the bottom of the page is a BTC address (please check it yourself): https://sci-hub.do/ https://sci-hub.do/ https://sci-hub.st/ https://sci-hub.st/ https://sci-hub.se/ https://sci-hub.se/ All the domains have the same address for me: 12PCbUDS4ho7vgSccmixKTHmq9qL2mdSns Money (and Bitcoin is among the freest money) can be used on whatever she needs.
- glenneroo 5y ago
  Just donated, thanks for the tip! (and for anyone wondering, yes that BTC address is correct, I triple-checked).
  - jers 5y ago
    Thanks for checking but probably best if everyone double checks for themselves too.
- enriquto 5y ago
  Cool! Never used bitcoin, but that may be the first time if I figure out how to do it.
  - maroonblazer 5y ago
    Me either. I took this opportunity to take the plunge. I had a Coinbase account already from years ago but never linked it to any payment source. At the time the only options were my bank account, which didn't sit well with me. Now PayPal is an option, which is also linked to my bank account, but the one level of indirection made me a bit less hesitant. Also, the combination of Coinbase and PayPal seems low(er) risk to me.
    - xkcd-sucks 5y ago
      Just FYI coinbase will ban you for "illegal" transactions which may include "copyright infringement"
juanani 5y ago
Yeah, there's this stain of an empire that we just can't easily scrub off the planet. Just don't worry about it and keep feeding it.
slim 5y ago
I think if you are a researcher, you should publish directly on sci-hub (is that even possible?) Make sci-hub the greatest and most prestigious scientific publication
- smt88 5y ago
  This would be wonderfully altruistic, but it would be career suicide as well.
  - enriquto 5y ago
    This is simply not true. The world has changed a lot the last 10 years. In many scientific fields, you are actually expected to publish your "preprint" in the open and also your source code.
    - 542458 5y ago
      In what fields are you expected to publish your source code? In the fields I’ve interacted with it was always an “above and beyond” thing that nobody would raise an eye at you not doing.
      - enriquto 5y ago
        i was thinking about image processing or machine learning, but i'm sure this is the case in other fields as well. Reproducible research is a "hot topic" in many places, and for good reasons.
      - ta988 5y ago
        ecology, more and more biology, chemistry...
    - smt88 5y ago
      That's not at all the same as the proposal I was replying to. They seemed to be saying that people should only publish in Sci-Hub, making it a prestigious publication (that would appear in press releases, one assumes) instead of just a mirror.
revscat 5y ago
It is important up understand that the laws are such that “justice” is equated with “maximizing capital”, as cynical as it is to say, and as such any financial support given to those who fight such a system will inevitably prove to be gestures without much effect. She may attempt to better humanity, but the neoliberal capitalism that permeates all governments, west to east, will stand against her for the primary reason that she interferes with increasing capital. She has no allies with any political power, however we may wish differently.
- acomar 5y ago
  it's one industry while others stand to reduce costs if she succeeds. the relatively warm welcome she receives here should indicate how willing other bourgeois segments are to support her platform. free access to information is not by itself anticapitalist, though it sure does make it easier. but recuperation is ever a threat (free software vs open source for a topical example).
  - revscat 5y ago
    When she fails — and she will — ask yourself why she failed. The answer will be couched in legal tenets, but the underlying fact remains that the intent of the law is to protect existing capital, at all costs. This is true from Washington to Beijing, from London to Johannesburg.
    - acomar 5y ago
      this is a poor analysis. different factions of capital frequently go to war with each other - always over the question of who gets to profit. (in fact, in the final analysis, these irreconcileable schisms within the bourgeoisie are a necessary, though insufficient, precursor to revolution.) I agree with you that she will probably fail but I think that's more about this project moreso than whether this project hurts capital. remember, the true point of vulnerability of the system is the point at which wages are paid and profits are earned. labor must strike to starve capital because anything else can be recuperated and commidified. lastly, yes, the intent of the law is to preserve existing capital, but as this board can attest, "existing capital" is a term constantly in flux, and laws change quickly to support the changing makeup of capital. otherwise, what has happened with uber would be impossible as governments fought to protect taxi companies - this happened but now uber no longer resides in a gray area. you'll note that what actually happened here was that finance capital extended it's reach and no new capital was actually created - it merely changed forms. that should also tell you how scihub might go from blacksheep of the bourgeois family to darling, especially once it's purchased and brought under the aegis of existing capital entities. however, for this to happen, Alexandra must play ball with investors, the legal system, etc., and as she has thus far resisted doing so, she will likely fail. projects like hers must either have secret and undiscoverable provenance, or be so distributed that legal force can only be brought to bear on a multitude of actors of no significance to the operation of the project - the hydra with many heads. so it's not legal tenets I look to but rather an analysis of capital itself.
VortexDream 5y ago
The world is infinitely worse if she or sci-hub are taken out. There's no way to quantify how incredibly useful it is to humanity as a whole, and it's probably the single best creation of the past 100 years, with no exaggeration. It's delivering what we always envisioned for the internet. The free exchange of information and ideas, no matter your nationality, your wealth, color of skin, etc.
cogburnd02 5y ago
What do you think about this? https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/push-copyright-aside.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/push-copyright-aside.en.html
Sr_developer 5y ago
These are my predictions: 1. She will be destroyed, one way or the other. Since she is eastern European the possibilities are vastless: Russian asset/ Spy/ Dangerous Hacker/ Covert Operation/ Putin enabler, etc, etc 2. Expect hundreds of "insightful" comments on here how she was actually wrong because X, Y, Z, the same points produced by mainstream media and the establishment politicians. 3. She will be shunned, forgotten and even jailed if she puts a foot in a "wrong" country, and by that I mean 80% of earth,
- kspacewalk2 5y ago
  It's well known that she's illiberal, in favour of a "strong state" like those of Russia and her native Kazakhstan, and probably had the usual views you expect from such people on matters like electing one's leaders in free elections, LGBT rights, Stalin, etc. If I were trying to discredit her, I'd dig in that direction.
rhizome 5y ago
>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. Pool money with everybody you know and hire a lobbyist.
Iv 5y ago
I feel that her case is exactly what presidential pardons are about. Otherwise, write to whatever lawmaker represents you to talk about it, to ask for a change of law and to support asylum for her if she ever asks it. But for now Russia seems to protect her.
Iv 5y ago
How about that: starting a campaign to nominate her to a nobel prize. I am not sure at which she would qualify the most, but I am sure there are no shortage of academics to sing her praises (this is a condition for nomination)
chrisseaton 5y ago
> She's just 32 years old. Weird thing to say - like you think 32 is a child or something? That’s someone well into their second decade of adulthood.

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
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  If going patent-free is good enough for the transistor… Do you have any rebuttal to parent’s points on Purdue and tech monopolies?
  - TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
    Yes, of course. Do you really think drug cartels need the IPTO? Or that the opioid crisis couldn't possibly have happened if the opioids had been generics? Who has an IP monopoly on alcohol production? Is alcohol addition a huge problem, or not? Why do you believe tech monopolies rely specifically on patents and not on massive spending power, political leverage, and other influencing mechanisms? Do you not understand that if you have the spending power, you can open-source your code and IP without even remotely endangering that monopoly? The reality is that patents are a relatively tiny element in cost of entry to markets. It's honestly baffling why the anti-copyright crowd believes removing patents and copyright will be some kind of magic bus ride to utopia, when there is no rational reason whatsoever to believe that. And none of this has much to do with making scientific papers public domain - because that isn't even the same class of issue.
    - breck 5y ago
      > Do you really think drug cartels need the IPTO? The legal ones do, absolutely. > Or that the opioid crisis couldn't possibly have happened if the opioids had been generics? "get an audience for our patent infringement suits so that we are feared as a tiger with claws, teeth and balls, and build some excitement with prescribers that OxyContin Tablets is the way to go." Richard Sackler in a 1996 email. I do not see OxyContin situations in a world with intellectual freedom, no. No government enforced monopoly profits, no massive incentive to overprescribe and lie. No copyright, and you get far more honest media, education, and healthcare industries. > Who has an IP monopoly on alcohol production? Is alcohol addition a huge problem, or not? Maybe it's far more of a problem that is generally known, but that truth is not made apparent because we don't have true freedom of the press b/c of copyright laws. > Why do you believe tech monopolies rely specifically on patents On patents and copyrights. If we were to declare tomorrow that search engines did not have to respect copyright law, we would see far better search engines than Google in a year or less. > The reality is that patents are a relatively tiny element in cost of entry to markets. Patents deter a huge number of startups from forming. Nearly every successful startup I know of gets targetted by patent trolls, and must decide to play that game and go along with the system. This is very discouraging to a huge number of innovators, especially in critical fields like chip design. > It's honestly baffling why the anti-copyright crowd believes removing patents and copyright will be some kind of magic bus ride to utopia, when there is no rational reason whatsoever to believe that. Not a magical bus ride to utopia, but a doubling to perhaps 10x increase in human productivity and equality, yes.
nhooyr 5y ago
What is IS law?
- greyface- 5y ago
  It seems to stand for "Intellectual Slavery": https://hn.algolia.com/?q=by%3Abreck%20%22intellectual%20slavery%22&type=all https://hn.algolia.com/?q=by%3Abreck%20%22intellectual%20sla...
syshum 5y ago
For the US, the fast path would be to push for all Federally Funded Research to be published under a Public Domain License, no different than NASA Images, recordings, or other public agency created research. We need to extend those provisions to include all research that gets federal tax money
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ta988 5y ago
  Thod is already true for NIH funded research after a one year embargo. But yes I would support that. Authors have to sign away the rights to their own texts and pictures to publishers! not just sharing rights like you do when putting a.picture on twitter, no... giving your full rights...

danuker 5y ago

> I don't know how to best support her. Any suggestions? My guess would be to donate to her. Near the bottom of the page is a BTC address (please check it yourself): https://sci-hub.do/ https://sci-hub.do/ https://sci-hub.st/ https://sci-hub.st/ https://sci-hub.se/ https://sci-hub.se/ All the domains have the same address for me: 12PCbUDS4ho7vgSccmixKTHmq9qL2mdSns Money (and Bitcoin is among the freest money) can be used on whatever she needs.

glenneroo 5y ago
Just donated, thanks for the tip! (and for anyone wondering, yes that BTC address is correct, I triple-checked).
- jers 5y ago
  Thanks for checking but probably best if everyone double checks for themselves too.
enriquto 5y ago
Cool! Never used bitcoin, but that may be the first time if I figure out how to do it.
- maroonblazer 5y ago
  Me either. I took this opportunity to take the plunge. I had a Coinbase account already from years ago but never linked it to any payment source. At the time the only options were my bank account, which didn't sit well with me. Now PayPal is an option, which is also linked to my bank account, but the one level of indirection made me a bit less hesitant. Also, the combination of Coinbase and PayPal seems low(er) risk to me.
  - xkcd-sucks 5y ago
    Just FYI coinbase will ban you for "illegal" transactions which may include "copyright infringement"

juanani 5y ago

Yeah, there's this stain of an empire that we just can't easily scrub off the planet. Just don't worry about it and keep feeding it.

slim 5y ago

I think if you are a researcher, you should publish directly on sci-hub (is that even possible?) Make sci-hub the greatest and most prestigious scientific publication

smt88 5y ago
This would be wonderfully altruistic, but it would be career suicide as well.
- enriquto 5y ago
  This is simply not true. The world has changed a lot the last 10 years. In many scientific fields, you are actually expected to publish your "preprint" in the open and also your source code.
  - 542458 5y ago
    In what fields are you expected to publish your source code? In the fields I’ve interacted with it was always an “above and beyond” thing that nobody would raise an eye at you not doing.
    - enriquto 5y ago
      i was thinking about image processing or machine learning, but i'm sure this is the case in other fields as well. Reproducible research is a "hot topic" in many places, and for good reasons.
    - ta988 5y ago
      ecology, more and more biology, chemistry...
  - smt88 5y ago
    That's not at all the same as the proposal I was replying to. They seemed to be saying that people should only publish in Sci-Hub, making it a prestigious publication (that would appear in press releases, one assumes) instead of just a mirror.

revscat 5y ago

It is important up understand that the laws are such that “justice” is equated with “maximizing capital”, as cynical as it is to say, and as such any financial support given to those who fight such a system will inevitably prove to be gestures without much effect. She may attempt to better humanity, but the neoliberal capitalism that permeates all governments, west to east, will stand against her for the primary reason that she interferes with increasing capital. She has no allies with any political power, however we may wish differently.

acomar 5y ago
it's one industry while others stand to reduce costs if she succeeds. the relatively warm welcome she receives here should indicate how willing other bourgeois segments are to support her platform. free access to information is not by itself anticapitalist, though it sure does make it easier. but recuperation is ever a threat (free software vs open source for a topical example).
- revscat 5y ago
  When she fails — and she will — ask yourself why she failed. The answer will be couched in legal tenets, but the underlying fact remains that the intent of the law is to protect existing capital, at all costs. This is true from Washington to Beijing, from London to Johannesburg.
  - acomar 5y ago
    this is a poor analysis. different factions of capital frequently go to war with each other - always over the question of who gets to profit. (in fact, in the final analysis, these irreconcileable schisms within the bourgeoisie are a necessary, though insufficient, precursor to revolution.) I agree with you that she will probably fail but I think that's more about this project moreso than whether this project hurts capital. remember, the true point of vulnerability of the system is the point at which wages are paid and profits are earned. labor must strike to starve capital because anything else can be recuperated and commidified. lastly, yes, the intent of the law is to preserve existing capital, but as this board can attest, "existing capital" is a term constantly in flux, and laws change quickly to support the changing makeup of capital. otherwise, what has happened with uber would be impossible as governments fought to protect taxi companies - this happened but now uber no longer resides in a gray area. you'll note that what actually happened here was that finance capital extended it's reach and no new capital was actually created - it merely changed forms. that should also tell you how scihub might go from blacksheep of the bourgeois family to darling, especially once it's purchased and brought under the aegis of existing capital entities. however, for this to happen, Alexandra must play ball with investors, the legal system, etc., and as she has thus far resisted doing so, she will likely fail. projects like hers must either have secret and undiscoverable provenance, or be so distributed that legal force can only be brought to bear on a multitude of actors of no significance to the operation of the project - the hydra with many heads. so it's not legal tenets I look to but rather an analysis of capital itself.

VortexDream 5y ago

The world is infinitely worse if she or sci-hub are taken out. There's no way to quantify how incredibly useful it is to humanity as a whole, and it's probably the single best creation of the past 100 years, with no exaggeration. It's delivering what we always envisioned for the internet. The free exchange of information and ideas, no matter your nationality, your wealth, color of skin, etc.

cogburnd02 5y ago

What do you think about this? https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/push-copyright-aside.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/push-copyright-aside.en.html

Sr_developer 5y ago

These are my predictions: 1. She will be destroyed, one way or the other. Since she is eastern European the possibilities are vastless: Russian asset/ Spy/ Dangerous Hacker/ Covert Operation/ Putin enabler, etc, etc 2. Expect hundreds of "insightful" comments on here how she was actually wrong because X, Y, Z, the same points produced by mainstream media and the establishment politicians. 3. She will be shunned, forgotten and even jailed if she puts a foot in a "wrong" country, and by that I mean 80% of earth,

kspacewalk2 5y ago
It's well known that she's illiberal, in favour of a "strong state" like those of Russia and her native Kazakhstan, and probably had the usual views you expect from such people on matters like electing one's leaders in free elections, LGBT rights, Stalin, etc. If I were trying to discredit her, I'd dig in that direction.

rhizome 5y ago

>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. Pool money with everybody you know and hire a lobbyist.

Iv 5y ago

I feel that her case is exactly what presidential pardons are about. Otherwise, write to whatever lawmaker represents you to talk about it, to ask for a change of law and to support asylum for her if she ever asks it. But for now Russia seems to protect her.

Iv 5y ago

How about that: starting a campaign to nominate her to a nobel prize. I am not sure at which she would qualify the most, but I am sure there are no shortage of academics to sing her praises (this is a condition for nomination)

chrisseaton 5y ago

> She's just 32 years old. Weird thing to say - like you think 32 is a child or something? That’s someone well into their second decade of adulthood.