US court grants Elsevier millions in damages from Sci-Hub
nature.com
nature.com
Well, that's bollocks. Obviating the need to use seven-click uncookied login systems adds value to the scholarly community in itself. And that's just for those whose universities already pay for the journal.
Fuck Elsevier and its trade associations.
For example, with this kind of legal win behind them they'll likely have a stronger case in persuading other places to not assist them.
Will it work in the end? Who knows. AFAIK "The Pirate Bay" is still a thing, even with the large amount of legal + dodgy coercion being applied to various supporting businesses (domain registrars, etc), country bodies, and so on to shutter it.
Plus someone probably now has the ability to stall their accounts or transactions which travel through US jurisdictions.
Seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through. Yes, they can possibly get certain accounts blocked, but don't they have anything else to do?
It also notes that 28 million articles have been downloaded, so perhaps the true damages according to law, if all downloads were considered, should be 28e6*15e6/100 = $4.2 trillion.
I wonder, how many of the 100 articles, or the 28 million for that matter, were written by staff at Elsevier? Well the number is zero articles of course. Then we might ask, how many of the 100 articles or the 28 million articles were written by anyone for whom Elsevier financially compensated? Again the number is zero articles of course. Yet Elsevier, who neither wrote nor paid for any of these articles they claim copyright to, is entitled to $4.2 trillion in damages.
We might also ask, how many of the 28 million articles downloaded were done so by people who if they had not found it on scihub would have paid the $28 or $39 or $179 1 day or 3 day or 7 day "access pass" to read the single article? Perhaps it is a few. Perhaps before scihub there were up to dozens of people a month buying these access passes, across the many millions of articles Elsevier claims to own despite them never having authored them nor having financially compensated the authors.
Who are the real thieving parasitical self-serving pirates here? Is it Elbakyan? Or is it Elsevier?
Who is the scientist fighting for academic freedom and working to spread knowledge here? Is it Elbakyan? Or is it Elsevier?
Caveat: not a lawyer.
In the many years that have passed since Napster, the copyright and patent trolls have had decent runs.
Copy right supporters in particular have converted their significant capital into lobbying and political power.
Many laws currently enacted, even the fight for Net Neutrality today, traces its roots back to the successful political and legal remedies applied by the MPAA and RIAA.
Take a look at the state of Pirate bay, and the various torrent trackers which have shut down.
Constant applied effort makes people stronger, it will also kill Sci-hub eventually.
1.Something stronger and more resistant to take down
2. Many differing sites offering the same services
3. Elsevier to change they way the operate so it is easier to buy direct from them that use sci hub or the like.
Not sure about your point on the Pirate bay, the site is still up and running.
Here's a tweet thread from May 17'th of this year; linked in the original artice, that would probably provide more info;
https://twitter.com/SteveMcLaugh/status/865002008515719168
This article is written by another journal, so, take the article with a bit of salt and pepper.
just gonna leave these here, anyway:
https://www.nature.com/ecommerce/subscribe.action?productId=...
http://www.nature.com/openresearch/publishing-with-npg/artic...
http://www.nature.com/openresearch/publishing-with-npg/natur...
It is absolutely a public good for me for any curious researchers to have unfettered access to as much human knowledge as possible. I guarantee we get more out of that than we do out of protecting a publishers business model.