Publisher Threatens to Sue Blogger for $1 Billion | Hacker News Reader

Publisher Threatens to Sue Blogger for $1 Billion

chronicle.com

90 pointsilamont46 comments

Academic phishing is real and often overlooked. Here are the articles in question:

http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/05/05/omics-publishing-launches-...

http://scholarlyoa.com/2013/01/25/omics-predatory-meetings/

http://scholarlyoa.com/2013/02/12/omics-ineptly-uses-social-...

That blog is hilarious, I often forward him tips from academic spam I receive. The niches just get weirder and stranger all the way down. What's really strange is that it seems to work.. someone might recognize this eventually, and nab some researchers as advisors on fake startups to boost "credibility".

"In an interview with The Chronicle, Ashok Ram Kumar, a senior lawyer with IP Markets, repeatedly mentioned the criminality of Mr. Beall's blog posts. In India, Section 66A of the Information Technology Act makes it illegal to use a computer to publish 'any information that is grossly offensive or has menacing character' or to publish false information. The punishment can be as much as three years in prison."

This is the flip side of the "global citizenship" bullshit people like to prattle on about--people with incompatible cultures in other countries trying to influence how you act in yours.

> "This is the flip side of the "global citizenship" bullshit people like to prattle on about"

Occasionally, there will be a poll of non-US citizens regarding who they would prefer to win a US political election. My response is always "you vote in your elections, I'll vote in mine. Your government can send ambassadors and diplomats to speak with mine."

It doesn't even have to be other countries. Residents of Texas and California can have fairly different ideas of how to act.

In that vein, people deride the U.S. for not participating in international criminal courts, and my response is a heartfelt: "thank god." For all its flaws, I'd rather only be subject to prosecution by the U.S. government, than some international entity influenced by all the countries (the vast majority of which are terrible.)

The funny (sad?) thing is that the rest of the world is terrified of the US government abducting them or extraditing them with political pressure for trumped up charges of terrorism or copyright infringement. Those people plea for help from the international courts you seem to hate.

Examples: Julian Assange, Richard O'Dwyer, everyone in Guantanamo Bay.

Edit: forgot Marc Emery, on drug charges.

This has nothing to do with "global citizenship". You wouldn't see something this specific come into "global law"; you'd see laws like "You can't kill people" and "You can't steal things" in "global law", things which are true across all cultures, etc.

In the U.S., we have to worry about religious conservatives in Alabama trying to get laws promulgated that would prevent women in California from getting abortions. That's the end-result of "U.S. citizenship", which allows Alabamans to have influence over the laws that bind Californians. What makes you think anything would be different with "global citizenship?" When you expand the body politic to include Indians, etc, you should expect them to push for laws that reflect their peculiar cultural beliefs, in a way that binds everyone.

> people with incompatible cultures in other countries trying to influence how you act in yours.

Just like what America is trying to do to Julian Assange, Kim Dotcom, the guys behind The Pirate Bay, etc. etc. ?

Sure. So why would you voluntarily want to add India, China, etc, to the list of countries seeking to bind you with the stupid laws they have?

I don't. I (and billions of others) want to remove America from the list.

America is on that list so long as it is the dominant military/economic power on the planet. You kind of have to resign yourself to that. You have a choice, however, in how many other countries are on that list. You can choose to limit that list by insulating yourself from international frameworks that give people in India, China, etc, a say in the laws that govern you in your country.

> America is on that list so long as it is the dominant military/economic power on the planet

Disgusting and completely unacceptable.

You're saying that big strong kids bullying smaller kids is perfectly acceptable and a way of life.

I pity you for thinking that way. What a horrible outlook.

I'm not making a judgment on whether on whether it's good or not, just pointing out that it is. In the history of the world, the dominant power has always been able to impose its will on everyone else.

There is no state of affairs where everyone just minds their own business. The choices are hegemony (for the time being, U.S. hegemony), or international cooperation via trans-national entities. International cooperation sounds great until you realize that the Finlands and New Zealands of the world are outnumbered by the Sudans and Saudi Arabias of the world. Given that most countries are objectively terrible, I'd much rather live in a world with the U.S. as the global bully than one in which the "smaller kids" have a say.

> I'm not making a judgment on whether on whether it's good or not, just pointing out that it is.

Are you saying we should just accept it then? I'd much rather do something about changing it.

> Given that most countries are objectively terrible

You need to get some better perspective.

In almost every measure for live on the street for the average Joe, America rates dead last among developed countries, and is often very comparable to developing countries. [1]

Heath, crime, safety, education, infrastructure, murder rates, etc. etc.

> I'd much rather live in a world with the U.S. as the global bully than one in which the "smaller kids" have a say.

If I had to choose one "bully", I would pick America dead last after every other developed country.

[1]http://www.oecd.org/statistics/

"Changing it" towards what? The practical direction of change would not be toward domination by the enlightened western democracies. It's not a choice between U.S. as the "global bully" or New Zealand. To the extent that the status quo can be changed, it would be towards more multi-lateral frameworks (strengthening the UN, international courts, etc). And that would be terrible.

While the U.S. may lag on many OECD measures, the fact of the matter is that there are only 25-35 countries that you could call modernized democracies. But any practical multi-lateral framework could not exclude the other 160-170 countries, and any framework in which China and India not to mention Saudi Arabia or Sudan have influence proportional to their population would not be preferable to U.S. hegemony.

It won't go unnoticed :) Ken over at Popehat picked it up... and it looks like OMICS Publishing Group's site is having some capacity problems. Enjoy the Streisand Effect.

http://www.popehat.com/2013/05/15/omics-publishing-group-mak...

I think it's funny that the lawyer includes "racial discrimination" ... but is there really anything wrong with discriminating against criminals, illogical lawyers (or anyone really) or even just stupid people?

Just because I don't want to associate with someone or a class of people, doesn't mean I discriminate against them. You won't generally see me in a bar full of drunk people or a movie theatre full of people watching a chick-flick either - shouldn't we call this "preference" instead?

Huh? "Criminal" and "illogical lawyer" are racial groups?

If this was a credible threat for the blogger, I suppose the case would have been brought to a domestic court. Though he probably should exclude India from his bucket list.

>If this was a credible threat for the blogger, I suppose the case would have been brought to a domestic court.

Even in a domestic court, a billion dollar judgment doesn't hold much of a scare to anyone that doesn't have a billion dollars.

In most states, anything you have in a retirement account (401k, IRA, Roth, etc) are partially or totally protected from creditors. Likewise 529 accounts are partially or completely protected in most states. Some states have generous homestead protections where you can protect some or all of the equity in your home. Some states don't allow wages to be garnished except for back taxes and child support.

Suing individuals is not the road-to-riches that some people think it might be.

Flagged. The title on HN has been specifically changed from that on the original article "Publisher Threatens to Sue Blogger for $1-Billion" to make it seem like it's about open access when it's actually about vanity publishing.

That's exactly the kind of change the "no editorializing in titles" rule is meant to cover.

Scholarly Open Access is the name of the blog. Scholarly Open Access Blogger is the person being sued.

That doesn't change the fact that it's misleading and not the original blog title. HN Policy is to keep original title unless there's a strong reason to change it.

"The list now features more than 250 publishers that he considers to be "potential, possible, or probable predatory" companies, which take advantage of academics desperate to get their work published."

Right there, the root cause of the problem: If you're "desperate" to get your research published, it most probably is not worth anything. These academics are not innocent victims, they usually know that these journals are not worth the paper they're printed on. But hey, it's another item in te resume.

> These academics are not innocent victims, they usually know that these journals are not with the paper they're printed on.

Are the poor sods publishing there supposed to live on air and light? They are publishing there because the rules of the game demand that they publish somewhere.

Seriously, what alternative do you suggest? I do agree that there are many colleges and graduate schools that ought to be shut down today, but neither myself not anyone else has any suggestion how to go about it.

Part of the problem is that the bar for getting a terminal degree is set lower than it should be. Maybe we should be reforming the committee selection process, before taking on the publishing industry.

They are publishing there because the rules of the game demand that they publish somewhere.

If I were in such a situation, I would rally up my peers and create some brand new open-access publisher specifically for ourselves (and other people we like). And charge $0 ;-) And do Google searches to avoid plagiarism.

How is that not equivalent to just publishing on the authors' website? Everything hinges on reputation.

The rules of the game demand that academics publish in respectable venues, not "somewhere". Publications in fake non-peer-reviewed journals ought to count for nothing and convincing people to hire or promote you based on fake publications is a form of fraud.

Maybe these people can find jobs on Wall Street.

There is this bizarro world of minor colleges, the kind that accepts anyone and hands out worthless Bachelors and Masters degrees. They all survive because these days even for the tea lady a high school certificate isn't sufficient, she has to have a college degree.

They cannot lay the bar too high, or else they would scare off their clientele, and they have to do "research", and they have to "publish", because this is what a university does, doesn't it? That is the target audience of these journals.

Yet another reason to separate teaching and research.

Publish or perish, unfortunately. If you lack the pubs, you won't get tenure. If you don't get tenure, you're shown the door. Sometimes research is actually not well understood and not published, but most of the time if it's not accepted to more mainline publications (and there are many non-predatory venues that are "easy publications") it's probably garbage. I get emails asking me to submit to bizarro conferences in strange places now and again. I think they scraped my info off publications from other areas, but I'm not sure. Either way it's pretty incredible what's going on here.

I like the 20000 eminent scholars mentioned on their website. Perhaps the local cemetery?

Is this reminding anyone else of the whole Oatmeal-FunnyJunk Debacle?

Journal publishers are little more than "pdf middle men". They offer less value than scribd, which is saying something.

You should really qualify that statement, many publishers (Nature, PNAS, etc.) are of very high quality and add significant value to the articles that they accept.

Many publishers don't add any value at all but blanket statements aren't helpful.

> For example, just one hyphen separates OMICS's Entomology-2013 conference from the Entomological Society of America's Entomology 2013 conference.

Sure, but what exactly are you going to call it? It's an Entomology conference in 2013, I hardly think the ESA has a "right" to the name.

  EntoCon 2013
  International Conference on Entomology 2013
  OMICS Entomology Symposium 2013
  etc.

At any rate I think you're interpreting the accusation quite narrowly; the assertion is that OMICS has repeatedly done this and/or performed other actions that wilfully intend to confuse and deceive (e.g. associating authors with their conference without permission). The battle isn't being fought over a hyphen in isolation.

I get the accusation, I'm saying it's an unfounded one amidst much more valid complaints. I'm attempting to say that there's no need for such a thing.

A legal "right" with respect to rights to a common English word and a number is very different from a "right" with respect to an industry that is supposed to be unbiased and thruthful. In science, the name of a publication, conference, or person means a lot. To run a "major" conference about entomology named almost exactly like the most recognizable event in the field smacks of nothing but dishonesty.

"Good luck with that."

Maybe they meant 1 billion rupees?

Can India Extradite a US Citizen for violating webpage and internet data consumption/viewing related crimes defined in India and convict them and get some fraction of that billion dollars?

Could the Taliban do the same thing if some Americans were found guilty of educating women against sharia law and be executed?

How much do I need to be researching internet crimes defined by other countries so I don't get targeted by predators from other ecosystems?

From Popehat:

First, if OMICS gets a civil judgment against him from India, they won't be able to enforce it here. The SPEECH Act prohibits any federal or state court in the United States from recognizing or enforcing a foreign judgment for defamation unless (1) the judgment creditor can prove that the foreign court offers equivalent protections for free speech as the defendant would have enjoyed in United States courts under the First Amendment, or (2) the judgment creditor can prove he or she would have prevailed even under the stricter standards in the United States.

Second, if OMICS seeks criminal charges against Mr. Beall in India, they won't be able to extradite him there. Like most extradition treaties, the treaty between the United States and India requires dual criminality — that is, that the offense is a crime in both countries. Hurting fee-fees isn't a crime in the United States. Moreover, under these circumstances, the chance that the U.S. Departments of State or Justice would cooperate with extradition requests is effectively zero.

The US govt is attempting to do a similar thing to Kim Dotcom. I assume though that it doesn't go both ways.

He should send OMICS a box of chocolates and a thank you for the free publicity. It's good to be an American in America!

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