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CloudFlare Can Be Ordered To Disclose Science Piracy Website Owner Details (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A New York judge has ruled that CDN provider Cloudflare can be compelled to disclose customer details for the domains libgen.io and bookfi.org, both of which are alleged to provide pirated access to scientific and technical papers, infringing the rights of controversial academic publisher Elsevier. Judge Robert Sweet ruled 'The evidence set forth...demonstrates that Elsevier (publisher who filed the lawsuit) is unable to identify the operators of libgen.org or bookfi.org, or the true location of the computer servers upon which those websites are hosted, absent the ability to take discovery from Cloudflare.' Sweet's ruling refers to 'absent identifying information' necessitating an injunction for Cloudflare to surrender details intended to begin an investigative financial trail to the domain registrants. This information could have been provided by British company TLD Registrar Solutions, who registered libgen.org in 2012 -- and hardly seems likely to retrench under pressure, given the oft-criticised transparency of legal process between the U.S. and the United Kingdom. ICANN and WHOIS also seem like obvious first points of enquiry (however ICANN's secession from control by the United States government at the end of September may have complicated using it as a legal resource), but apparently, neither can help.
Then clearly you need to get out more... or.. less, I'm not sure in this context, or why that's relevant, but it's a shame that anyone is using resources to shut these sites down. I suppose it's all in the name of copyright. When it comes to text books, scientific knowledge, they should always be free, anyone, regardless of wealth or affiliation, like the link says, should have access to this stuff for free--- of course the publishers and authors need to be paid for their work, so it's a sticky wicket. Wickets stuck or not, this is more or less what Aaron Swartz fought and died for, we need a solution... and no, I don't have one, other than throw all of it on a torrent tracker with Magnet links and a web host outside of the US/five eyes... but that's just me.
640k ought to be enough for anyone.
I too thank Elsevier for this new information. I already use sci-hub for my professional work because it's better than my uni library's services. I found out about it from a similar news article a while ago.
Where should OneHundredAndTen and I be looking to be aware of these kind of resources? I don't have the energy or inclination to stick it to the Man, I just read lots of scientific articles for my work. So if I got out more... or... less, what else do I need to know to do my science efficiently and add to the world's knowledge? Where do I go when these websites stop functioning to find their replacement?