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Elsevier Wants $15 Million In 'Piracy' Damages From Sci-Hub and Libgen (torrentfreak.com)
lbalbalba writes: Elsevier, one of the largest academic publishers, is demanding $15 million in damages from Sci-Hub and LibGen, who make paywalled scientific research papers freely available to the public [without permission]. A good chunk of these papers are copyrighted, many by Elsevier. Elsevier has requested a default judgment of $15 million against the defendants for their "truly egregious conduct" and "staggering" infringement. Sci-Hub's efforts are backed by many prominent scholars, who argue that tax-funded research should be accessible to everyone. Others counter that the site doesn't necessarily help the "open access" movement move forward. Sci-Hub's founder Alexandra Elbakyan defends her position and believes that what she does is helping millions of less privileged researchers to do their work properly by providing free access to research results.
quick! before they get a court order taking the site down somebody write a perl script to take the research papers and automatically publish them on turrentz.eu^W limetorrents^W extratorrents^W torrentfreak^W argh forget it...
Yeah, there's a study that was publshed in one of Elsevier's journals. Unfortunately it's not up on scihub yet, so I can't include a link.
All joking aside, yes, this is an itch being scratched, not a primarily political thing. Real work was being blocked by the unavailability of journals anywhere without a strong currency, or without really substantial funding, There's no question that the Elsevier model prevents useful work from being done.
.. aren't the only people on the internet. Should the entire world (including US's rivals) have access to taxpayer-funded research, when one of your primary competitive advantages is r&d?
I know scientists don't really care much for nationalism (as welll htey shouldn't), but if this is taxpayer-funded research, then it's not entirely up to them.
They journal does the effort of finding a good editor (at least, good enough) and making sure things go smoothly. Someone has to do that job.
You are right, the value is very small, and I favor replacing them.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Are you retarded? If taxpayer fund the research, even in a small way, then taxpayers are entitled to the results. Don't like it? Don't take taxpayer money. It's pretty straightforward isn't it douchebag?
You are right, but that is an entirely different argument from the general one about copyright.
In the UK we have something called Crown Copyright for works created by government and paid for by the taxpayer. These are generally available for free (as in beer) although I believe that in practice there is a charge for printed documents. For example, you can view the Highway Code online without paying, but if you buy it in the shops it's a couple of quid, to cover costs of printing, distribution etc. What you can't do is copy the Highway Code and sell your own version or whatever as it is protected by the Crown Copyright.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it