7 ms·

Thousands of scientific papers uploaded to The Pirate Bay

200 points by nextparadigms 15y ago

4J7z0Fgt63dTZbs 15y ago
so where's the torrent?
- nickythegreek 15y ago
  http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6554331/Papers_from_Philosophical_Transactions_of_the_Royal_Society__fro http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6554331/Papers_from_Philosop...
  - slowpoke 15y ago
    I'm gonna seed the fuck out of this. There's always place for knowledge on my HDDs, and there will always be bandwidth I can sacrifice for spreading that knowledge. I dare to say: For science!
sp332 15y ago
original posted here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2789709 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2789709
ams6110 15y ago
... Scientific publications are some of the most outrageously expensive pieces of literature you can buy. In the past, the high access fees supported the costly mechanical reproduction of niche paper journals, but online distribution has mostly made this function obsolete. Another reason they are so expensive might be that the reprints are almost always expenses against research grants, so there is little in the way of "market forces" working to keep the price commensurate with the true value.
repos 15y ago
Scientific publications/journals are highly ineffective, but what is the alternative? The current system is so entrenched in the politics of science - you need publications in respectable journals to advance your career or to get grants. It's going to be very difficult to break.
- Produce 15y ago
  I've got an idea about this in the concept phase. Think OSS meets science.
  - nightski 15y ago
    Don't think this will work out as well. Not only can you get paid to do OSS, but we (programmers) also have the option of obtaining very high paying jobs while working on OSS projects on the side. Not only this, but lots of research requires quite a bit more expensive equipment than writing software. I mean I would love to see something like this work but I have my doubts :)
    - Produce 15y ago
      I'm not looking to profit from this so I'll give you a brief summary of the concept. Essentially, the idea is to remove, or at the least, decrease, political influence over science. The problem right now is that very few scientists can research things which actually interest them. Often, they are working for a company which is attempting to make more money, or the military, which is attempting to kill more people, or academia, where the idea is to get the most prestige. All of those things directly decrease the quality of research and have no place in science. As a scientist, I could go onto this site, write up a hypothesis and outline the experiment that needs to be performed to test it. Then, people who have an interest in the particular piece of research could provide funding, loan equipment or even directly contribute by becoming part of the team. After the experiment has been completed, the results are released in the public domain (this also helps to break up the monopoly that scientific publication have). Crowd sourcing is then utilised to verify the findings and discuss their implications. To put it another way, science should be something that everyone can do, given enough free time and determination, yet, as things are, only a select few get to do this and often have to deal with mountains of politics to get to that stage.
  - repos 15y ago
    Is software the issue? I think the problem is that the only way to get your science out to other scientists is through journals. Yeah journals filter the good research from the bad, but there has to be a better way. The review process itself isn't even great. A better system would also allow for the release of negative data.
Maro 15y ago
It's interesting to note that the person who created this torrent, Greg Maxwell, is not trying to remain anonymous, he put his name and email into the torrent description.
- andresmh 15y ago
  ...and a bitcoin address
  - efnx 15y ago
    Definitely in the event that he needs help paying legal fees.
araneae 15y ago
"Thousands of scientific papers uploaded to The Pirate Bay" Is it any surprise that the fed is attacking torrent sites? Even a tech news site puts incorrect titles on its news articles. He didn't upload papers to the Pirate Bay, he uploaded a 165kb torrent file to the Pirate Bay. It may sound like semantics but it has real legal repercussions.
- rimmjob 15y ago
  " a .torrent file pointing to thousands of scientific papers has just been uploaded to the pirate bay" doesnt really fit into a headline
  - rjprins 15y ago
    "Thousands of scientific papers were shared via The Pirate Bay"
    - sp332 15y ago
      This is still pretty misleading. TPB only hosts the .torrent file, they don't have any of the contents of the files being shared. They don't even run a tracker anymore! Any method of distributing a small file to a large number of people would have worked in the exact same way. The only thing TPB has that (e.g.) Google Docs doesn't is mindshare.
      - rjprins 15y ago
        Yes, I agree. I guess the problem lies in mentioning The Pirate Bay in the first place. The facilitator is unimportant. It's like saying that the documents were mailed via TNT.
      - lhnz 15y ago
        They don't run a tracker anymore?! Are they using other people's trackers or just the DHT feature?
        15y ago
MetaMan 15y ago
Taking things on face value I congratulate him. There's been a few times when I've tried to access an interesting academic paper only to find that it's only available behind some pay- wall. Why should we have to pay for a scientific paper if it was produced by a public funded institution? What's the long term effect on the spread and advancement of knowledge if access is restricted and "gamed" for profit? If he's sued (against assuming I properly understand the issues here) I'll probably contribute to his defence because he's acting in everyone's interest.
- bborud 15y ago
  once you start taking a closer look at academic publishing practices quite a lot of it ranges from "silly" to "morally questionable". and not just in publishing. there's particularly one practice that I find particularly distasteful, and that is the practice of putting the names of people who had nothing to do with the publicaion on papers. either to market the paper itself ("ooh, look, I have a famous professor's name next to mine!") or to boost the publication list of some tenured has-been. a few years ago there was a scandal here in Norway. a doctor got caught fabricating research results. as the shitstorm hit the media his "co-authors" (none of which seemed to have done any of the work or the writing, and some of which denied even knowing about the paper) ran for cover. oh and how they ran. I must say that I found it somewhat questionable that they didn't get thrown out of academia for having put their name on a piece of fraudulent bullshit. if the paper was good enough to put their name on it should be good enough to stand by. it ought to be a mandatory practice to mark these frauds in publication lists and databases as such: frauds. most I have talked to who are still in academia defend the practice. and when they run out of sensible arguments in its favor, which they inevitably do, they go with the old "well, it is how it is done. so we shouldn't rock the boat". quite a few of these people have a change of heart after leaving academia. or after having a re-think about ethics and honesty and why it really, really matters if you are to call what you are doing "science".
  - w1ntermute 15y ago
    > most I have talked to who are still in academia defend the practice. and when they run out of sensible arguments in its favor, which they inevitably do, they go with the old "well, it is how it is done. so we shouldn't rock the boat". Well scientists are no less irrational than the rest of us, and why would anyone in a position of power ever be interested in changing the status quo?
sitkack 15y ago
Please don't conflate the pay walls with public domain, these journal articles are clearly in the public domain. And they should not be behind a pay wall. Locking in of the worlds historical knowledge is even worse, I think, than locking in current research. The economic return to the holders of the keys to the garden have no moral or legal right to assert control over the this knowledge, when their articles of incorporation most likely expose the oposite of their actions. These organizations are greedy wholesale hypocrites.
- pestaa 15y ago
  I'm no legal expert, but I'd guess it's illegal to sell what is in the public domain. Why hasn't anybody done anything?
  - zaphar 15y ago
    I am not a lawyer or expert either but I do not believe it is illegal to sell something in the public domain. That's sort of the point of Public Domain. No one can tell you not to sell it.
  - kotrin 15y ago
    We sell water don't we?
    - MiguelHudnandez 15y ago
      Exactly, you can charge for providing access to anything, as long as you are not obstructing public property to do so. Even if the works are in the public domain, the copies that you maintain are yours and you can charge for access to those copies.
  - jemfinch 15y ago
    You've really never seen a Dover book? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dover_Books http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dover_Books Publishing works that are in the public domain is their bread and butter.
  - 15y ago
ac-slater 15y ago
Interesting. This appears to be Greg Maxwell (gmaxwell) from Xiph. Xiph is an organization that respects software patents. (As opposed to various other multimedia efforts like VideoLAN and libav that ignore them).

200 points by nextparadigms 15y ago

4J7z0Fgt63dTZbs 15y ago

so where's the torrent?

nickythegreek 15y ago
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6554331/Papers_from_Philosophical_Transactions_of_the_Royal_Society__fro http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6554331/Papers_from_Philosop...
- slowpoke 15y ago
  I'm gonna seed the fuck out of this. There's always place for knowledge on my HDDs, and there will always be bandwidth I can sacrifice for spreading that knowledge. I dare to say: For science!

sp332 15y ago

original posted here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2789709 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2789709

ams6110 15y ago

... Scientific publications are some of the most outrageously expensive pieces of literature you can buy. In the past, the high access fees supported the costly mechanical reproduction of niche paper journals, but online distribution has mostly made this function obsolete. Another reason they are so expensive might be that the reprints are almost always expenses against research grants, so there is little in the way of "market forces" working to keep the price commensurate with the true value.

repos 15y ago

Scientific publications/journals are highly ineffective, but what is the alternative? The current system is so entrenched in the politics of science - you need publications in respectable journals to advance your career or to get grants. It's going to be very difficult to break.

Produce 15y ago
I've got an idea about this in the concept phase. Think OSS meets science.
- nightski 15y ago
  Don't think this will work out as well. Not only can you get paid to do OSS, but we (programmers) also have the option of obtaining very high paying jobs while working on OSS projects on the side. Not only this, but lots of research requires quite a bit more expensive equipment than writing software. I mean I would love to see something like this work but I have my doubts :)
  - Produce 15y ago
    I'm not looking to profit from this so I'll give you a brief summary of the concept. Essentially, the idea is to remove, or at the least, decrease, political influence over science. The problem right now is that very few scientists can research things which actually interest them. Often, they are working for a company which is attempting to make more money, or the military, which is attempting to kill more people, or academia, where the idea is to get the most prestige. All of those things directly decrease the quality of research and have no place in science. As a scientist, I could go onto this site, write up a hypothesis and outline the experiment that needs to be performed to test it. Then, people who have an interest in the particular piece of research could provide funding, loan equipment or even directly contribute by becoming part of the team. After the experiment has been completed, the results are released in the public domain (this also helps to break up the monopoly that scientific publication have). Crowd sourcing is then utilised to verify the findings and discuss their implications. To put it another way, science should be something that everyone can do, given enough free time and determination, yet, as things are, only a select few get to do this and often have to deal with mountains of politics to get to that stage.
- repos 15y ago
  Is software the issue? I think the problem is that the only way to get your science out to other scientists is through journals. Yeah journals filter the good research from the bad, but there has to be a better way. The review process itself isn't even great. A better system would also allow for the release of negative data.

Maro 15y ago

It's interesting to note that the person who created this torrent, Greg Maxwell, is not trying to remain anonymous, he put his name and email into the torrent description.

andresmh 15y ago
...and a bitcoin address
- efnx 15y ago
  Definitely in the event that he needs help paying legal fees.

araneae 15y ago

"Thousands of scientific papers uploaded to The Pirate Bay" Is it any surprise that the fed is attacking torrent sites? Even a tech news site puts incorrect titles on its news articles. He didn't upload papers to the Pirate Bay, he uploaded a 165kb torrent file to the Pirate Bay. It may sound like semantics but it has real legal repercussions.

rimmjob 15y ago
" a .torrent file pointing to thousands of scientific papers has just been uploaded to the pirate bay" doesnt really fit into a headline
- rjprins 15y ago
  "Thousands of scientific papers were shared via The Pirate Bay"
  - sp332 15y ago
    This is still pretty misleading. TPB only hosts the .torrent file, they don't have any of the contents of the files being shared. They don't even run a tracker anymore! Any method of distributing a small file to a large number of people would have worked in the exact same way. The only thing TPB has that (e.g.) Google Docs doesn't is mindshare.
    - rjprins 15y ago
      Yes, I agree. I guess the problem lies in mentioning The Pirate Bay in the first place. The facilitator is unimportant. It's like saying that the documents were mailed via TNT.
    - lhnz 15y ago
      They don't run a tracker anymore?! Are they using other people's trackers or just the DHT feature?
      - 15y ago

MetaMan 15y ago

Taking things on face value I congratulate him. There's been a few times when I've tried to access an interesting academic paper only to find that it's only available behind some pay- wall. Why should we have to pay for a scientific paper if it was produced by a public funded institution? What's the long term effect on the spread and advancement of knowledge if access is restricted and "gamed" for profit? If he's sued (against assuming I properly understand the issues here) I'll probably contribute to his defence because he's acting in everyone's interest.

bborud 15y ago
once you start taking a closer look at academic publishing practices quite a lot of it ranges from "silly" to "morally questionable". and not just in publishing. there's particularly one practice that I find particularly distasteful, and that is the practice of putting the names of people who had nothing to do with the publicaion on papers. either to market the paper itself ("ooh, look, I have a famous professor's name next to mine!") or to boost the publication list of some tenured has-been. a few years ago there was a scandal here in Norway. a doctor got caught fabricating research results. as the shitstorm hit the media his "co-authors" (none of which seemed to have done any of the work or the writing, and some of which denied even knowing about the paper) ran for cover. oh and how they ran. I must say that I found it somewhat questionable that they didn't get thrown out of academia for having put their name on a piece of fraudulent bullshit. if the paper was good enough to put their name on it should be good enough to stand by. it ought to be a mandatory practice to mark these frauds in publication lists and databases as such: frauds. most I have talked to who are still in academia defend the practice. and when they run out of sensible arguments in its favor, which they inevitably do, they go with the old "well, it is how it is done. so we shouldn't rock the boat". quite a few of these people have a change of heart after leaving academia. or after having a re-think about ethics and honesty and why it really, really matters if you are to call what you are doing "science".
- w1ntermute 15y ago
  > most I have talked to who are still in academia defend the practice. and when they run out of sensible arguments in its favor, which they inevitably do, they go with the old "well, it is how it is done. so we shouldn't rock the boat". Well scientists are no less irrational than the rest of us, and why would anyone in a position of power ever be interested in changing the status quo?

sitkack 15y ago

Please don't conflate the pay walls with public domain, these journal articles are clearly in the public domain. And they should not be behind a pay wall. Locking in of the worlds historical knowledge is even worse, I think, than locking in current research. The economic return to the holders of the keys to the garden have no moral or legal right to assert control over the this knowledge, when their articles of incorporation most likely expose the oposite of their actions. These organizations are greedy wholesale hypocrites.

pestaa 15y ago
I'm no legal expert, but I'd guess it's illegal to sell what is in the public domain. Why hasn't anybody done anything?
- zaphar 15y ago
  I am not a lawyer or expert either but I do not believe it is illegal to sell something in the public domain. That's sort of the point of Public Domain. No one can tell you not to sell it.
- kotrin 15y ago
  We sell water don't we?
  - MiguelHudnandez 15y ago
    Exactly, you can charge for providing access to anything, as long as you are not obstructing public property to do so. Even if the works are in the public domain, the copies that you maintain are yours and you can charge for access to those copies.
- jemfinch 15y ago
  You've really never seen a Dover book? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dover_Books http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dover_Books Publishing works that are in the public domain is their bread and butter.
- 15y ago

ac-slater 15y ago

Interesting. This appears to be Greg Maxwell (gmaxwell) from Xiph. Xiph is an organization that respects software patents. (As opposed to various other multimedia efforts like VideoLAN and libav that ignore them).