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I find it fascinating that SciHub seems to be highlighting two large issues. - Globalisation and the rule of law. Mostly that's a good thing. But SciHub wou

I find it fascinating that SciHub seems to be highlighting two large issues. - Globalisation and the rule of law. Mostly that's a good thing. But SciHub would unlikely survive if Russia was unable to give US courts the middle finger regularly over the last decade. I am not convinced that the benefits of totalitarian regime outweighs the downsides but it is a thing - copyright law is not patent law, science is not patents So patents do seem to provide a way for inventors to protect a revenue stream. But the model of science is not one person or org does all the research and then exploits it for profit. So patents don't really seem to support science. And copyright has nothing to do with either. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub Edit: one way of looking at it is that Science has socialism built in. Patents are a means of encouraging innovation by arranging that revenue flows back to the innovator, as long as the whole market obeys the patent law and licensing conditions. But apart from "bad" actors, the amount of licensing is vast and probably impossible to track back (you would need point of sale, bill of materials, supply chain data etc) Science has a simpler answer - publish the innovation openly and assume that the growth in wealth will feed back into general wealth growth. Which is kinda looking like "everyone shares". So it suggests a singularity style step function - when / if something like UBI works, science will have a massive boost as the feedback loop is not mediated through university grants etc.

ncphil 5y ago
The main flaw in both patent and copyright law is that the terms of protection are entirely too long. It's now over a century for some corporate owned copyrights. That directly contradicts the goal of copyright: to advance science and the arts by encouraging the building of a commons. The terms of exclusivity were meant as incentives to that end, not personal or institutional rewards. Lately I've been thinking that those terms should have been gradually shortened as the pace of change and speed of communications (including opportunities for sales) increased. At this point IP law is actively hindering the advance of science and art. Projects like Sci-Hub are restoring sanity to a system that lawmakers have for various reasons sold out to the barbarians. Two years, non-renewable, for any invention or work that had absolutely no public funding. Anything with direct public funding goes immediately into the public domain.
kongin 5y ago
>- Globalisation and the rule of law. Mostly that's a good thing. But SciHub would unlikely survive if Russia was unable to give US courts the middle finger regularly over the last decade. I am not convinced that the benefits of totalitarian regime outweighs the downsides but it is a thing I can't wait for 2030 when China overtakes the US as the worlds largest economy. We can all then be banned from the internet for having seen the doctored photo of nothing happening on May 35th.
- adventured 5y ago
  That's not going to be a problem. When it comes to censorship of the Internet, your primary risk is the 5 / 14 / 19 eyes groups, not China. China isn't a critical part of the global Internet today and they'll be even less a part of it in another decade. They operate their own separate network that only poorly connects to the Internet, by design. That separation will increase considerably over this decade. Xi is currently putting new restraints into place to pull Chinese tech companies back even further from the Internet and into their own isolated network. When China becomes the largest economy by GDP, it'll be meaningless to the operation of the Internet, which they'll only kinda-sorta be a part of. Further, China is now widely regarded as the top adversary to the US and the West. That context will get increasingly confrontational and war-like in the coming years. Nearly all members of Congress are on board the anti-China bandwagon now, they've all gotten the message from above (the military industrial complex, which dictates nearly all foreign policy). The cultural atmosphere will increasingly become like it was when the USSR was the primary adversary for decades. As that confrontation increases, China's influence over the Internet will be intentionally reduced by the powers that actually do control the Internet today. China sees that coming as well and is taking steps ahead of time to reduce its exposure, points of influence and risk. At this point China views a military confrontation with the West as close to inevitable (which recent Xi speeches have elaborated on). This increasing separation effort by China is in part designed to make it possible for China to attempt to destroy/damage the Internet - if it comes to that - without posing much terminal risk to their network and economy in the process. If they take down the Internet, it'll butcher the economies of their adversaries, while their own network remains highly functional. This is something the West is almost entirely unprepared for, and China is aggressively preparing for it; an epic mistake by the West.
einpoklum 5y ago
> So patents do seem to provide a way for inventors to protect a revenue stream. Not necessarly: 1. The vast majority of patents are owned by large companies, not the individual inventors. 2. Patents are very often used purely as "spoilers", i.e. preventing other companies, and even more so individuals, from working in a close enough field to the holding company's, so as not to risk patent litigation.

ncphil 5y ago

The main flaw in both patent and copyright law is that the terms of protection are entirely too long. It's now over a century for some corporate owned copyrights. That directly contradicts the goal of copyright: to advance science and the arts by encouraging the building of a commons. The terms of exclusivity were meant as incentives to that end, not personal or institutional rewards. Lately I've been thinking that those terms should have been gradually shortened as the pace of change and speed of communications (including opportunities for sales) increased. At this point IP law is actively hindering the advance of science and art. Projects like Sci-Hub are restoring sanity to a system that lawmakers have for various reasons sold out to the barbarians. Two years, non-renewable, for any invention or work that had absolutely no public funding. Anything with direct public funding goes immediately into the public domain.

kongin 5y ago

>- Globalisation and the rule of law. Mostly that's a good thing. But SciHub would unlikely survive if Russia was unable to give US courts the middle finger regularly over the last decade. I am not convinced that the benefits of totalitarian regime outweighs the downsides but it is a thing I can't wait for 2030 when China overtakes the US as the worlds largest economy. We can all then be banned from the internet for having seen the doctored photo of nothing happening on May 35th.

adventured 5y ago
That's not going to be a problem. When it comes to censorship of the Internet, your primary risk is the 5 / 14 / 19 eyes groups, not China. China isn't a critical part of the global Internet today and they'll be even less a part of it in another decade. They operate their own separate network that only poorly connects to the Internet, by design. That separation will increase considerably over this decade. Xi is currently putting new restraints into place to pull Chinese tech companies back even further from the Internet and into their own isolated network. When China becomes the largest economy by GDP, it'll be meaningless to the operation of the Internet, which they'll only kinda-sorta be a part of. Further, China is now widely regarded as the top adversary to the US and the West. That context will get increasingly confrontational and war-like in the coming years. Nearly all members of Congress are on board the anti-China bandwagon now, they've all gotten the message from above (the military industrial complex, which dictates nearly all foreign policy). The cultural atmosphere will increasingly become like it was when the USSR was the primary adversary for decades. As that confrontation increases, China's influence over the Internet will be intentionally reduced by the powers that actually do control the Internet today. China sees that coming as well and is taking steps ahead of time to reduce its exposure, points of influence and risk. At this point China views a military confrontation with the West as close to inevitable (which recent Xi speeches have elaborated on). This increasing separation effort by China is in part designed to make it possible for China to attempt to destroy/damage the Internet - if it comes to that - without posing much terminal risk to their network and economy in the process. If they take down the Internet, it'll butcher the economies of their adversaries, while their own network remains highly functional. This is something the West is almost entirely unprepared for, and China is aggressively preparing for it; an epic mistake by the West.

einpoklum 5y ago

> So patents do seem to provide a way for inventors to protect a revenue stream. Not necessarly: 1. The vast majority of patents are owned by large companies, not the individual inventors. 2. Patents are very often used purely as "spoilers", i.e. preventing other companies, and even more so individuals, from working in a close enough field to the holding company's, so as not to risk patent litigation.