7 ms·

Sci-Hub founder receives EFF award for providing access to scientific knowledge

494 points by gslin 3y ago

m3kw9 3y ago
Thats a high bar
rhaksw 3y ago
The EFF endorses piracy? This is like the internet archive library giving unlimited access to books without authorization for "emergency access" during covid.
- causi 3y ago
  Endorsement is not the same as performance. I endorse peoples' right to use drugs or put obscene bumper stickers on their car. Doesn't mean I do the same.
- exo762 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
    "I am the publisher now."
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  Generally, almost nobody cares about IP infringement, but in the case of academic papers it's even worse. Even the authors and the peer reviewers of the work don't care about it 99% of the time. They don't see a single cent from the publication that's charging you $1000 per month to access their work. Scihub saves you from finding the email address of one of the authors and waiting for a reply for your request for a copy of the paper. I'd be surprised and disappointed if a party like the EFF would be against free access to scientific knowledge. That includes educational books on the Internet Archive.
  - michaelmior 3y ago
    > I'd be surprised and disappointed if a party like the EFF would be against free access to scientific knowledge. It's possible to support and encourage free access to scientific knowledge while not supporting IP infringement.
    - lolinder 3y ago
      It's important to have both running in parallel. The more that Sci-Hub becomes normalized, the more people wonder why it's illegal in the first place. When you have a pirate site which the content creators themselves endorse and use, it really serves to highlight how broken the existing academic IP system is.
      - michaelmior 3y ago
        I'm not arguing that the system isn't broken although not all content creators endorse and use Sci-Hub.
        Keirmot 3y ago
        Can you link to a public post of one such individual, which is also not connected to a publication?
        michaelmior 3y ago
        I'm not sure what you mean by "not connected to a publication", but you can consider me one such individual and this is a public post.
    - CogitoCogito 3y ago
      > It's possible to support and encourage free access to scientific knowledge while not supporting IP infringement. Is not supporting IP infringement a necessary precondition to supporting and encouraging free access to scientific knowledge?
- lolinder 3y ago
  Legality and ethics are often disjoint, and for many people Sci-Hub is pretty clearly a case where piracy is the ethical thing to do. My personal opinion is this: tax dollars pay for a huge proportion of the research that is then reviewed by volunteers (whose pay also comes out of taxes) and then published in journals that charge insane prices to host a PDF of this taxpayer-funded research. Sci-Hub takes this publicly-funded research and makes it available to the public like it always should have been.
  - michaelmior 3y ago
    At least in the US, all government-funded research will be required to be freely available immediately starting in 2026. It's unclear what the overall impact will be. Certainly this access is a good thing, but it's unclear how publishers will respond. It's possible authors might be forced to pay publishing fees for open access, which would then inflate grant budgets (since this only applies to government research, this means the taxpayer is footing the bill). They may choose to be open access by default, in which case, another source of revenue will be necessary. Part of the challenge is that for many academics, it's necessary for advancement to publish in prestigious venues which are not always open access. https://cen.acs.org/policy/publishing/White-House-mandates-immediate-open/100/web/2022/08 https://cen.acs.org/policy/publishing/White-House-mandates-i...
    - lolinder 3y ago
      I can't figure out why in 2023 running a journal costs very much money at all. The authors are paid by someone else, the peer reviewers are paid by someone else, and an online-only journal would be completely acceptable today. What other overhead do these publications have?
      - michaelmior 3y ago
        Limiting to online-only journals (which is already the case with many journals), there's still editors, administrative staff, and hosting costs. I'm sure many would argue (and I would agree) that this shouldn't require exorbitant sums of money. However, some money is still required and I'm not sure where this would come from aside from funds collected from either authors or consumers (institutional or otherwise). I'm not saying the model we have is the only possible model, just that I don't think there's an obvious alternative that solves all the various aspects of the problem.
- logifail 3y ago
  > The EFF endorses piracy? Q: Do content creators (the scientists and researchers) approve or disapprove of Sci Hub?
  - michaelmior 3y ago
    I make all my research outputs publicly accessible wherever legally possible. Any of my published work that is behind a publisher paywall is also available for free and should be pretty easy to find. I personally disapprove of Sci-Hub's approach of piracy, but I can understand the utility. I also believe I'm likely in the minority here.
- troupo 3y ago
  Ask the authors of those papers she "pirated". IIRC there's overwhelming support for what she's doing in the scientific community. The pirates are Elsevier etc.
  - gandalfgreybeer 3y ago
    I’ve had colleagues who have published in high impact journals ask me to grab a copy of their own work from scihub since they couldn’t access it themselves. Of course, they have the manuscripts themselves but they just wanted the published format.
tremon 3y ago
EFF Award winners (linked from the article): https://www.eff.org/press/releases/electronic-frontier-foundation-present-annual-eff-awards-alexandra-asanovna-elbakyan https://www.eff.org/press/releases/electronic-frontier-found... - Alexandra Asanovna Elbakyan — EFF Award for Access to Scientific Knowledge - Library Freedom Project — EFF Award for Information Democracy - Signal Foundation — EFF Award for Communications Privacy
ourmandave 3y ago
Aw, I should at least get a participation badge for providing access to all my personal information via every hacked service I've ever signed up for.
mydriasis 3y ago
Good stuff! Love free knowledge, it's important for all of us.
lolinder 3y ago
Previous discussion of the actual announcement from EFF: Annual EFF Awards: Alexandra Elbakyan, Library Freedom Project, and Signal (248 points, 33 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36899608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36899608
tokai 3y ago
[flagged]
- bigbillheck 3y ago
  On what grounds?
  - tokai 3y ago
    Well the quote if this piece. Scihub is definetly not only her. All the people sharing access to research are what made it what it is. Her closing the access to all of russia because she got insulted over having a parasitic wasp named in her honor was petty and showed how brittle scihub is as a service.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- gandalfgreybeer 3y ago
  Isn’t it her own project? In that case, someone could easily just do their own version. What she built has lasted (so far) and has been helpful to countless academics and students. My question though is how she’s being a selfish crackpot? Feels like the goal of Sci hub isn’t really selfish from my point of view.
SubGenius 3y ago
> “It was really disgusting to read they ask me to accept their EFF Pioneer award ‘on behalf of Sci-Hub’,” Elbakyan said in response two weeks before the awards were officially announced. > “Why did not they want to give the award to me directly? Sci-Hub is my sole creation; it is not an organization and never had any team. In 1998 they awarded Torvalds, not Linux,” she added. Definitely understandable, especially considering that the DOJ/FBI were investigating her directly.
- jjoonathan 3y ago
  Yeah, but this reason to hesitate (they didn't want to get in trouble for directly endorsing her) is the same reason why it was important to directly endorse her. I'm glad they made the right choice.
gjsman-1000 3y ago
Honestly, I think this is a bad idea in the long run. The EFF is the most vocal critic of DRM in the public sphere by far (the FSF barely registers). Now the MPA and copyright holders can dismiss their testimony out of hand for being that group that gave an award to a copyright infringer. Not that the MPA or John Deere would’ve respected the EFF anyway, but I’m sure it’s going to be mentioned in future court cases as a way to discredit the arguments.
- pizza 3y ago
  That’s more the medium term than the long term, right? The hope is, in the long run, Elbakyan’s contribution to intellectual freedom will matter more
- pessimizer 3y ago
  I care far more about the availability of scientific publications than about producers putting DRM on their own products. The thing I'm against is the government telling me that I can't strip DRM. But I think it's everybody's right to wrap their creations in a puzzle; it's just cheating to get the cops to hit me with a stick if I try to solve that puzzle, or try to tell anyone else how to solve it.
idlewords 3y ago
Elbakyan is a legend and this award is richly deserved. In terms of democratizing knowledge, her achievement is on a par with Wikipedia.
- Llamamoe 3y ago
  I know so many things I never could have without Sci-Hub. Its value in enabling access to scientific knowledge simply cannot be overstated.
superb-owl 3y ago
Elbakyan's about page is worth a read: https://sci-hub.ru/alexandra https://sci-hub.ru/alexandra
- politelemon 3y ago
  This URL won't load for me, anything specific about it? I simply get secure connection failed, authenticity of the received data could not be verified.
  - ipcress_file 3y ago
    This should load: https://web.archive.org/web/20230717065235/https://sci-hub.ru/alexandra https://web.archive.org/web/20230717065235/https://sci-hub.r...
  - unmole 3y ago
    Is your ISP blocking .ru domains?
- tootie 3y ago
  She was so secretive for so long, it's crazy she's waving to us on that page. This interviewer flew to Kazakhstan to meet her and wasn't even sure she'd show up: https://radiolab.org/podcast/library-alexandra https://radiolab.org/podcast/library-alexandra
  - slim 3y ago
    She probably lost any hope to live free and resigned herself to be forever hunted like a criminal by US administration and its international stooges. At least she's safe in Russia
    - tootie 3y ago
      Is this some of autonomic response? She is facing civil trial for violating copyright. The CIA isn't going to rendition her for that. And she has no intention of leaving Kazakhstan. She comes across as being mildly autistic and acts completely unconcerned with legal issues.
brucethemoose2 3y ago
I can't remember the EFF ever doing/asserting something I disagree with. I can't say that about many organizations.
IAmNotACellist 3y ago
Oy, you've got a loicense to access that publicly funded knowledge? Look what Carmen Ortiz did to Aaron Swartz.
jokowueu 3y ago
YSK : Scihub hasn't added any new papers since the trials began (2020) . If any one wants new papers there are alternatives such as the nexus project , there is a working bot on telegram that I use from time to time
- MasterYoda 3y ago
  No new papers since 2020? :( Maybe because of that I didn't find a paper I wanted to read. How does the nexus project work? I dont use telgram and dont want to download an app or create an account for one paper. Is it possible to access the nexus project thru the web and just simple download from there instead? Or is there any other web sites like sci-hub on the web that have newer papers than 2020?
  - pretext 3y ago
    > Is it possible to access the nexus project thru the web and just simple download from there instead? Yes, it's possible. Their current web gate: https://standard--template--construct-org.ipns.dweb.link/ https://standard--template--construct-org.ipns.dweb.link/ More info: https://www.reddit.com/r/scihub/comments/13cms8m/how_to_use_nexus_bots_or_stc_to_download_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/scihub/comments/13cms8m/how_to_use_...
  - jokowueu 3y ago
    Check here https://standard--template--construct-org.ipns.dweb.link/#/ https://standard--template--construct-org.ipns.dweb.link/#/ More info here https://www.reddit.com/r/scihub/comments/12detqs/standard_template_construct_store_and_search_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/scihub/comments/12detqs/standard_te...
- adrian_b 3y ago
  Even if Scihub will never add any new paper again, it will remain extremely useful, because it contains a large number of older papers that are very difficult to obtain from any other source. For the new papers, a significant percentage can be found as preprints in arxiv or the like, or are published in open-access journals, so the difficulty in obtaining them is typically less than for older papers that are still important. Moreover, even if I pay a non-negligible amount of money for the access at certain journals, I frequently prefer to search for their articles on Scihub, because I can get them so much faster, without wasting time with logins or with searching for articles in the wrong place, because they were published elsewhere.
dataflow 3y ago
Out of curiosity, does the EFF have any history of rewarding people for breaking laws, or is this the first time?
dmix 3y ago
Does the award come with money?
Qem 3y ago
I hope someday she earns a Nobel prize. By inventing a paywall-proof electronic printing press she has the impact of a modern-day Gutenberg.
imchillyb 3y ago
Copyrights and Patents were never intended for use by corporations. How can I claim this?! When both copyrights and patents were invented the longest 'corporate charter' a company could hold was 6 months in total. Patents and Copyrights were designed to aid fledgling businesses in America compete against the behemoth industrial machines of England, Spain, France, and Europe in general. Companies in those countries were expansionist and simply bought out any serious competition. Our country's founders didn't want that system taking hold of American economics, so invented protections against such things occurring here. Remove the copyrights and patents from ANY multinational corporation. If it's not an American-ONLY based company -where money isn't shipped wholesale overseas- then they can no longer enjoy patents or copyrights in America. POOF... problem solved.
- blitzar 3y ago
  > Our country's founders didn't want that system taking hold of American economics, so invented protections against such things occurring here. They had zero IP and were building a country on stolen IP, of course they wanted to play fast and loose. Now that the US has IP and others dont, they are doing what they do best, The World Police.
  - skeaker 3y ago
    I think you and GP are agreeing. GP says that they want to return to that initial form of copyright because they do not agree with how World Police US is operating.
solardev 3y ago
This lady has probably done more to advance science than most Nobel winners. She deserves all that and more.
gareve 3y ago
Seems it will be hard for her to attend the event on San Francisco, given that US decided to label her as Russian spy.
- DANmode 3y ago
  They'll get her a Snowden-Stand, no sweat.
apienx 3y ago
An awesome and courageous organization gives an award to an awesome and courageous person. Congrats Alexandra!
znxster 3y ago
I work for a Uni and remember back in the day compromised accounts ripping publisher content via our proxy. Enough that we wound up removing the proxy and forcing internal access. A lot of the reason that Sci-Hub content has stalled in more recent users is security around accounts (MFA, SAML etc). The reason there is still a lot of warnings floating around about using Sci-Hub is the threat that publishers hold over Unis in terms of licensing and the users understanding the threat to their accounts/personal data. The method of getting the papers was bad, even if the reasoning was good. Hopefully more Universities continue focusing on open access of their research in line with BOAI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Open_Access_Initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Open_Access_Initiativ...).

494 points by gslin 3y ago

Thats a high bar

The EFF endorses piracy? This is like the internet archive library giving unlimited access to books without authorization for "emergency access" during covid.

causi 3y ago
Endorsement is not the same as performance. I endorse peoples' right to use drugs or put obscene bumper stickers on their car. Doesn't mean I do the same.
exo762 3y ago
[flagged]
- ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
  "I am the publisher now."
jeroenhd 3y ago
Generally, almost nobody cares about IP infringement, but in the case of academic papers it's even worse. Even the authors and the peer reviewers of the work don't care about it 99% of the time. They don't see a single cent from the publication that's charging you $1000 per month to access their work. Scihub saves you from finding the email address of one of the authors and waiting for a reply for your request for a copy of the paper. I'd be surprised and disappointed if a party like the EFF would be against free access to scientific knowledge. That includes educational books on the Internet Archive.
- michaelmior 3y ago
  > I'd be surprised and disappointed if a party like the EFF would be against free access to scientific knowledge. It's possible to support and encourage free access to scientific knowledge while not supporting IP infringement.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    It's important to have both running in parallel. The more that Sci-Hub becomes normalized, the more people wonder why it's illegal in the first place. When you have a pirate site which the content creators themselves endorse and use, it really serves to highlight how broken the existing academic IP system is.
    - michaelmior 3y ago
      I'm not arguing that the system isn't broken although not all content creators endorse and use Sci-Hub.
      - Keirmot 3y ago
        Can you link to a public post of one such individual, which is also not connected to a publication?
        michaelmior 3y ago
        I'm not sure what you mean by "not connected to a publication", but you can consider me one such individual and this is a public post.
  - CogitoCogito 3y ago
    > It's possible to support and encourage free access to scientific knowledge while not supporting IP infringement. Is not supporting IP infringement a necessary precondition to supporting and encouraging free access to scientific knowledge?
lolinder 3y ago
Legality and ethics are often disjoint, and for many people Sci-Hub is pretty clearly a case where piracy is the ethical thing to do. My personal opinion is this: tax dollars pay for a huge proportion of the research that is then reviewed by volunteers (whose pay also comes out of taxes) and then published in journals that charge insane prices to host a PDF of this taxpayer-funded research. Sci-Hub takes this publicly-funded research and makes it available to the public like it always should have been.
- michaelmior 3y ago
  At least in the US, all government-funded research will be required to be freely available immediately starting in 2026. It's unclear what the overall impact will be. Certainly this access is a good thing, but it's unclear how publishers will respond. It's possible authors might be forced to pay publishing fees for open access, which would then inflate grant budgets (since this only applies to government research, this means the taxpayer is footing the bill). They may choose to be open access by default, in which case, another source of revenue will be necessary. Part of the challenge is that for many academics, it's necessary for advancement to publish in prestigious venues which are not always open access. https://cen.acs.org/policy/publishing/White-House-mandates-immediate-open/100/web/2022/08 https://cen.acs.org/policy/publishing/White-House-mandates-i...
  - lolinder 3y ago
    I can't figure out why in 2023 running a journal costs very much money at all. The authors are paid by someone else, the peer reviewers are paid by someone else, and an online-only journal would be completely acceptable today. What other overhead do these publications have?
    - michaelmior 3y ago
      Limiting to online-only journals (which is already the case with many journals), there's still editors, administrative staff, and hosting costs. I'm sure many would argue (and I would agree) that this shouldn't require exorbitant sums of money. However, some money is still required and I'm not sure where this would come from aside from funds collected from either authors or consumers (institutional or otherwise). I'm not saying the model we have is the only possible model, just that I don't think there's an obvious alternative that solves all the various aspects of the problem.
logifail 3y ago
> The EFF endorses piracy? Q: Do content creators (the scientists and researchers) approve or disapprove of Sci Hub?
- michaelmior 3y ago
  I make all my research outputs publicly accessible wherever legally possible. Any of my published work that is behind a publisher paywall is also available for free and should be pretty easy to find. I personally disapprove of Sci-Hub's approach of piracy, but I can understand the utility. I also believe I'm likely in the minority here.
troupo 3y ago
Ask the authors of those papers she "pirated". IIRC there's overwhelming support for what she's doing in the scientific community. The pirates are Elsevier etc.
- gandalfgreybeer 3y ago
  I’ve had colleagues who have published in high impact journals ask me to grab a copy of their own work from scihub since they couldn’t access it themselves. Of course, they have the manuscripts themselves but they just wanted the published format.

tremon 3y ago

EFF Award winners (linked from the article): https://www.eff.org/press/releases/electronic-frontier-foundation-present-annual-eff-awards-alexandra-asanovna-elbakyan https://www.eff.org/press/releases/electronic-frontier-found... - Alexandra Asanovna Elbakyan — EFF Award for Access to Scientific Knowledge - Library Freedom Project — EFF Award for Information Democracy - Signal Foundation — EFF Award for Communications Privacy

ourmandave 3y ago

Aw, I should at least get a participation badge for providing access to all my personal information via every hacked service I've ever signed up for.

mydriasis 3y ago

Good stuff! Love free knowledge, it's important for all of us.

lolinder 3y ago

Previous discussion of the actual announcement from EFF: Annual EFF Awards: Alexandra Elbakyan, Library Freedom Project, and Signal (248 points, 33 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36899608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36899608

tokai 3y ago

[flagged]

bigbillheck 3y ago
On what grounds?
- tokai 3y ago
  Well the quote if this piece. Scihub is definetly not only her. All the people sharing access to research are what made it what it is. Her closing the access to all of russia because she got insulted over having a parasitic wasp named in her honor was petty and showed how brittle scihub is as a service.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
gandalfgreybeer 3y ago
Isn’t it her own project? In that case, someone could easily just do their own version. What she built has lasted (so far) and has been helpful to countless academics and students. My question though is how she’s being a selfish crackpot? Feels like the goal of Sci hub isn’t really selfish from my point of view.

SubGenius 3y ago

> “It was really disgusting to read they ask me to accept their EFF Pioneer award ‘on behalf of Sci-Hub’,” Elbakyan said in response two weeks before the awards were officially announced. > “Why did not they want to give the award to me directly? Sci-Hub is my sole creation; it is not an organization and never had any team. In 1998 they awarded Torvalds, not Linux,” she added. Definitely understandable, especially considering that the DOJ/FBI were investigating her directly.

jjoonathan 3y ago
Yeah, but this reason to hesitate (they didn't want to get in trouble for directly endorsing her) is the same reason why it was important to directly endorse her. I'm glad they made the right choice.

gjsman-1000 3y ago

Honestly, I think this is a bad idea in the long run. The EFF is the most vocal critic of DRM in the public sphere by far (the FSF barely registers). Now the MPA and copyright holders can dismiss their testimony out of hand for being that group that gave an award to a copyright infringer. Not that the MPA or John Deere would’ve respected the EFF anyway, but I’m sure it’s going to be mentioned in future court cases as a way to discredit the arguments.

pizza 3y ago
That’s more the medium term than the long term, right? The hope is, in the long run, Elbakyan’s contribution to intellectual freedom will matter more
pessimizer 3y ago
I care far more about the availability of scientific publications than about producers putting DRM on their own products. The thing I'm against is the government telling me that I can't strip DRM. But I think it's everybody's right to wrap their creations in a puzzle; it's just cheating to get the cops to hit me with a stick if I try to solve that puzzle, or try to tell anyone else how to solve it.

idlewords 3y ago

Elbakyan is a legend and this award is richly deserved. In terms of democratizing knowledge, her achievement is on a par with Wikipedia.

Llamamoe 3y ago
I know so many things I never could have without Sci-Hub. Its value in enabling access to scientific knowledge simply cannot be overstated.

superb-owl 3y ago

Elbakyan's about page is worth a read: https://sci-hub.ru/alexandra https://sci-hub.ru/alexandra

politelemon 3y ago
This URL won't load for me, anything specific about it? I simply get secure connection failed, authenticity of the received data could not be verified.
- ipcress_file 3y ago
  This should load: https://web.archive.org/web/20230717065235/https://sci-hub.ru/alexandra https://web.archive.org/web/20230717065235/https://sci-hub.r...
- unmole 3y ago
  Is your ISP blocking .ru domains?
tootie 3y ago
She was so secretive for so long, it's crazy she's waving to us on that page. This interviewer flew to Kazakhstan to meet her and wasn't even sure she'd show up: https://radiolab.org/podcast/library-alexandra https://radiolab.org/podcast/library-alexandra
- slim 3y ago
  She probably lost any hope to live free and resigned herself to be forever hunted like a criminal by US administration and its international stooges. At least she's safe in Russia
  - tootie 3y ago
    Is this some of autonomic response? She is facing civil trial for violating copyright. The CIA isn't going to rendition her for that. And she has no intention of leaving Kazakhstan. She comes across as being mildly autistic and acts completely unconcerned with legal issues.

brucethemoose2 3y ago

I can't remember the EFF ever doing/asserting something I disagree with. I can't say that about many organizations.

IAmNotACellist 3y ago

Oy, you've got a loicense to access that publicly funded knowledge? Look what Carmen Ortiz did to Aaron Swartz.

jokowueu 3y ago

YSK : Scihub hasn't added any new papers since the trials began (2020) . If any one wants new papers there are alternatives such as the nexus project , there is a working bot on telegram that I use from time to time

MasterYoda 3y ago
No new papers since 2020? :( Maybe because of that I didn't find a paper I wanted to read. How does the nexus project work? I dont use telgram and dont want to download an app or create an account for one paper. Is it possible to access the nexus project thru the web and just simple download from there instead? Or is there any other web sites like sci-hub on the web that have newer papers than 2020?
- pretext 3y ago
  > Is it possible to access the nexus project thru the web and just simple download from there instead? Yes, it's possible. Their current web gate: https://standard--template--construct-org.ipns.dweb.link/ https://standard--template--construct-org.ipns.dweb.link/ More info: https://www.reddit.com/r/scihub/comments/13cms8m/how_to_use_nexus_bots_or_stc_to_download_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/scihub/comments/13cms8m/how_to_use_...
- jokowueu 3y ago
  Check here https://standard--template--construct-org.ipns.dweb.link/#/ https://standard--template--construct-org.ipns.dweb.link/#/ More info here https://www.reddit.com/r/scihub/comments/12detqs/standard_template_construct_store_and_search_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/scihub/comments/12detqs/standard_te...
adrian_b 3y ago
Even if Scihub will never add any new paper again, it will remain extremely useful, because it contains a large number of older papers that are very difficult to obtain from any other source. For the new papers, a significant percentage can be found as preprints in arxiv or the like, or are published in open-access journals, so the difficulty in obtaining them is typically less than for older papers that are still important. Moreover, even if I pay a non-negligible amount of money for the access at certain journals, I frequently prefer to search for their articles on Scihub, because I can get them so much faster, without wasting time with logins or with searching for articles in the wrong place, because they were published elsewhere.

dataflow 3y ago

Out of curiosity, does the EFF have any history of rewarding people for breaking laws, or is this the first time?

dmix 3y ago

Does the award come with money?

Qem 3y ago

I hope someday she earns a Nobel prize. By inventing a paywall-proof electronic printing press she has the impact of a modern-day Gutenberg.

imchillyb 3y ago

Copyrights and Patents were never intended for use by corporations. How can I claim this?! When both copyrights and patents were invented the longest 'corporate charter' a company could hold was 6 months in total. Patents and Copyrights were designed to aid fledgling businesses in America compete against the behemoth industrial machines of England, Spain, France, and Europe in general. Companies in those countries were expansionist and simply bought out any serious competition. Our country's founders didn't want that system taking hold of American economics, so invented protections against such things occurring here. Remove the copyrights and patents from ANY multinational corporation. If it's not an American-ONLY based company -where money isn't shipped wholesale overseas- then they can no longer enjoy patents or copyrights in America. POOF... problem solved.

blitzar 3y ago
> Our country's founders didn't want that system taking hold of American economics, so invented protections against such things occurring here. They had zero IP and were building a country on stolen IP, of course they wanted to play fast and loose. Now that the US has IP and others dont, they are doing what they do best, The World Police.
- skeaker 3y ago
  I think you and GP are agreeing. GP says that they want to return to that initial form of copyright because they do not agree with how World Police US is operating.

solardev 3y ago

This lady has probably done more to advance science than most Nobel winners. She deserves all that and more.

gareve 3y ago

Seems it will be hard for her to attend the event on San Francisco, given that US decided to label her as Russian spy.

DANmode 3y ago
They'll get her a Snowden-Stand, no sweat.

apienx 3y ago

An awesome and courageous organization gives an award to an awesome and courageous person. Congrats Alexandra!

znxster 3y ago

I work for a Uni and remember back in the day compromised accounts ripping publisher content via our proxy. Enough that we wound up removing the proxy and forcing internal access. A lot of the reason that Sci-Hub content has stalled in more recent users is security around accounts (MFA, SAML etc). The reason there is still a lot of warnings floating around about using Sci-Hub is the threat that publishers hold over Unis in terms of licensing and the users understanding the threat to their accounts/personal data. The method of getting the papers was bad, even if the reasoning was good. Hopefully more Universities continue focusing on open access of their research in line with BOAI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Open_Access_Initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Open_Access_Initiativ...).