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Comment by crumbshot | Hacker News Reader

By her own words, in creating and maintaining Sci-Hub, Elbakyan was driven by communist ideals: https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc850001 https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc920674

Interesting to observe how it overlaps with this conception of the hacker spirit.

If only the world had many more Alexandra Elbakyans, and fewer Elseviers. Humanity as a whole would be a lot better off without the capitalists ruining everything with their insatiable greed.

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> interesting to observe how it overlaps with this conception of the hacker spirit

There is quite a difference between giving voluntarily and being expropriated.

> would be a lot better off without the capitalists

That's less capitalism, but rather monopolism and nepotism (actually a "government failure" in the view of public economics). If there were real competition, these publishers could not afford to charge such margins.

Yeah, like that horrible capitalist company that funded the research lab which invented the transistor, Unix and C. We'd be so much better off without it out its 'capitalist, profit-driven creations'. (AT&T, Bell labs)

Despite your unnecessary sarcasm, this is actually a good example, seeing as the company was eventually destroyed by the US government for abusing its monopoly position.

They did indeed fund a highly successful research centre, but - importantly to its success - one that wasn't run with the same ideals as its parent. It wasn't Bell Labs itself that endeavoured to monopolise an entire industry to the point where the government had to intervene.

Yeah, because unlike everything else ever invented in history, if AT&T and Bell hadn't done it, no one else ever would have, and there's also zero chance another wouldn't have done it any better.

Bell Labs was the beneficiary of a government-enforced monopoly on telephone service, but never mind that.

The counter point to this is DARPA and the dearth of private research going on currently.

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