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Who's Downloading Pirated Scientifc Papers? Everyone (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit quotes a report from Science Magazine: In increasing numbers, researchers around the world are turning to Sci-Hub, the controversial website that hosts 50 million pirated papers and counting. Now, with server log data from Alexandra Elbakyan, the neuroscientist who created Sci-Hub in 2011 as a 22-year-old graduate student in Kazakhstan, Science addresses some basic questions: Who are Sci-Hub's users, where are they, and what are they reading? The Sci-Hub data provide the first detailed view of what is becoming the world's de facto open-access research library. Among the revelations that may surprise both fans and foes alike: Sci-Hub users are not limited to the developing world. Some critics of Sci-Hub have complained that many users can access the same papers through their libraries but turn to Sci-Hub instead -- for convenience rather than necessity. The data provide some support for that claim. Over the 6 months leading up to March, Sci-Hub served up 28 million documents, with Iran, China, India, Russia, and the United States the leading requestors.
The person who did the work/put in the time isn't going to see anything from the money that goes to a scientific journal or textbook publisher. As someone who's written a textbook, I can tell you that very few authors are paid based upon the sales of that textbook.
And scientific journals? The authors/researchers were paid before the paper was even submitted to the journal.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Do you give your work/time away for free? (I am assuming you work)
When you publish in an Elsevier journal, you sign away any IP in the paper, and get no royalty from them. Worse still is that everyone who sees your paper has to do so through an institution that has to pay an expensive subscription for access.