Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Elsevier Wants $15 Million In 'Piracy' Damages From Sci-Hub and Libgen (torrentfreak.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the not-on-my-watch dept.

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.

38 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. bleh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Death to Elsevier

    1. Re:bleh by mellon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's a government-imposed monopoly, not capitalism.

    2. Re: bleh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Amen.

      Elsevier's entire business model is based on restricting the spread of information and keeping the world stupider than it needs to be. It's time for them to be put out of business.

      Emperor Trump, are you listening? Make America great again by smashing the filthy neofeudal parasites at Elsevier.

    3. Re: bleh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      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?

    4. Re:bleh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      You have fundamental misunderstanding of what Elsevier does and why it does what it does. Elsevier does not pay the authors of the papers it publishes. What the authors get is access and scientific credit. For most scientists you have to publish papers to get credit and feedback from other scientists. Back before the internet Elsevier printed and bound and distributed scientific journals. They did this for papers that were approved by other scientists. Now most of this is done electronicly at a much lower cost. The editorial function of Elsevier remains. Many of the papers Elsevier publishes are actually the result government funded research. In the US government funded research papers can only be tied up for a limited time.
      Similar disputes are occurring in the legal field within the US. The law can and is different in different countries. Elsevier is an expensive dinosaur which needs to change with the times.

    5. Re:bleh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Prestige and impact factor. Yes, you could start your own journal. However, if I'm some university researcher and I want tenure, or a post-doc looking for a job, it makes much more sense for my career to publish in the most prestigious journal I can. It goes back to the stupid 'publish or perish' model. The system, in its wisdom, says that you have to have those publications, end of story. Nothing else matters.

      What you say is true in theory, but it requires a lot of people recognizing the problems we have and being willing to be the change necessary to make improvements. Unfortunately, knowing the problem and taking the steps to change it are two different things.

    6. Re: bleh by tehcyder · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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
    7. Re:bleh by Wootery · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is why there needs to be a change in the law. It should be unlawful to take the results of publicly-funded research and lock it away behind the paywall of a private company who contribute nothing.

      Pass the law, and publish-behind-paywalls-or-perish will perish overnight. Well-behaved replacements will emerge. We know this is possible, as the open access movement is already making some progress.

  2. Long live scihub by mSparks43 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Funny if Elselvier lose!!

    1. Re:Long live scihub by rholtzjr · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The question is how did a private company get a copyright on tax payer funded research. Who granted the copyright for data that was payed for by the tax payers? Well, it is the political establishment in one case that is trying to tie the hands of NIH funded research in private companies that required them to publicly release findings. Both Rep. and Dem. congress critters are introducing legislation that will remove this requirement and restrict any other agency to enforce this requirement. In other words, they will be granted a "copyright" to the material and we the people paid for it.

    2. Re:Long live scihub by alvinrod · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Indeed. I think this is one clear area where the government could (and should) step in and revoke Elsevier's copyrights. I don't think the current administration would actually do such a thing, but then again if Clinton had won she probably wouldn't either.

    3. Re:Long live scihub by nomadic · · Score: 2

      Huh? They provided it to whoever has a subscription to the journal, or has some access, or has a friend who showed them a copy, or who glanced at in in a library. They don't own the data. The researchers are perfectly free to release all that into the public domain.

    4. Re:Long live scihub by harvey+the+nerd · · Score: 2

      Actually there are several questions that probably need to be reviewed at the Appellate and Supreme Court levels until "they get it right".

      Copyright has metastasized into corporate perpetuities from foreign (mostly European) ideas and practices that are not literally based on the Constitution.

    5. Re:Long live scihub by elgatozorbas · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Who granted the copyright for data that was payed for by the tax payers?

      The researchers paid with you tax money did. Their interests and the nation's interests are not necessarily the same. They decided to publish in a "reputable" magazine than in some "non-established" open journal (possibly) because it adds to their prestige. This may change. Maybe in ten years the open journals are more prestigious. Maybe the Government should instate a law prohibiting publication in non-open journals.

      Besides: the conflict between personal interest and the judicious spending of tax money is nothing new. What benefit do you have from your president spending his weekends in mar-a-lago?

  3. How does this help? by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'd never heard of this site before but I agree with the goal of SciHub that the results of scientific research, especially that funded by governments, should be freely available to everyone. However, the way to achieve that is by lobbying governments to make it a requirement that all research they fund is published in open access journals (which is now largely the case). Simply breaking the law on a massive scale like this is not likely to end well nor, in the long-term, achieve the aim of making research freely available.

    1. Re:How does this help? by Man+On+Pink+Corner · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Couldn't disagree more. We wouldn't have Spotify, Apple Music, Google Music, and a host of other halfway-decent services if Napster hadn't come first.

      When the law does not respect the people, the people will not respect the law.

    2. Re:How does this help? by mellon · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    3. Re:How does this help? by Sir+Holo · · Score: 4, Informative

      Is there any actual proof that SciHub's illegal activity is having a positive impact on poor countries?

      I don't know the answer to your specific question, but I can answer another one:

      Does SciHub increase the Impact Factor (IF)* of Elsevier journals, by spreading articles within them more widely, and thus getting them cited more? The answer is an undoubted "YES."

      * IF is a "rule-of-thumb" number that gives you a general idea of the relevancy of any particular journal.**

      ** IF can be gamed, so Thomson-Reuters came out with the "Eigenfactor", which is much more resistant to gaming or "fluffing."

    4. Re:How does this help? by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 2

      When the law does not respect the people, the people will not respect the law.

      ...but the point here is nothing to do with the law. The point here is the scientific research should be freely available for all. This is not a beef about the evils of current IP law but rather an ideological belief that we should all have free access to scientific papers. Even if copyright laws were completely fair and reasonable there would still be an issue here.

      What's more, it's even a belief that the vast majority of scientists and governments share which is why most of us now publish our research in open access journals where anyone can access it. So to use your Napster analogy it would be like Napster starting up now once we already have Spotify, Apple Music, Google Music etc. Hence my failing to understand exactly what SciHub is hoping to achieve.

    5. Re:How does this help? by nbauman · · Score: 3, Informative

      http://www.sciencemag.org/news...
      Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone
      In rich and poor countries, researchers turn to the Sci-Hub website.
      By John BohannonApr. 28, 2016 , 2:00 PM

    6. Re:How does this help? by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Insightful

      SciHub was created by someone who is practicing civil disobedience.
      To say civil disobedience never works, and the government should be petitioned instead, is to ignore history.

      That said, civil disobedience can be painful.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    7. Re:How does this help? by Man+On+Pink+Corner · · Score: 3, Informative

      But it's the people that define the law

      Pull the other one. It has a bell attached!

  4. torrent it! by lkcl · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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...

    1. Re:torrent it! by rholtzjr · · Score: 3, Informative

      “The Sci-Hub will continue as usual. In case of problems with the domain names, users can rely on TOR scihub22266oqcxt.onion,” Elbakyan tells us.

      It is already there.

  5. How come Elsevier still exist? by GuB-42 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Traditional scientific journals had their use before internet and effective search engines became widespread.
    But now, why do people pay them? What do they bring to the table? Distribution is dirt cheap, search engines make finding relevant publications easy, most editing is done by the researchers themselves and peer-review is not paid. The only service they seem to offer is pass the papers from the original researchers to reviewers, and, based on the review, decide to grant it the honor of being published. Publishing means making it available online with a ludicrous price tag.
    And even for scientists, what good does it make being published in a journal that restricts access. I know some researchers who simply don't use paywalled papers. If they find something interesting, they try to work around the paywall (legally) and if they can't, the paper is ignored and therefore not cited.

    1. Re:How come Elsevier still exist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      It is due to the unfortunate tradition of basing tenure for scientists on the impact factor of the journals they publish their works in. Elsevier happens to own several high impact journals. Of course, for scientists at research universities where tenure is granted by fellow professor, a simple change of how the faculty evaluate new comers' work can eliminate most of the motivation to publish with an Elsevier journal.

    2. Re:How come Elsevier still exist? by Sir+Holo · · Score: 4, Informative

      YES YES YES! The Pubic pays THREE times for scientific and engineering information. Everyone does.

      (1) Your taxes pay for research projects.
      (2) The researcher does the work, and writes-up his/her results in a paper.
      (3) A Referee for the Journal gives it a thumbs-up or -down for publication, doing the job for free.
      (4) The Researcher must then pay the journal "page charges" to print the article.
      (5) To access the article, anyone must go to a library that pays an extortionate subscription fee to the journal to allow the Public access. Alternatively, a person can pay $30-100 for a PDF of the article. This group includes, BTW, the authors of a given article.

      I once had to pay $35 to get a PDF of an article where I was a listed co-author!!! (My library, at a top-10 US university, did not describe to the journal in question, so I was stuck.)

    3. Re:How come Elsevier still exist? by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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."
  6. For you, Elsevier... by Sir+Holo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From the bottom of my heart: Fuck you!

    I am a highly-cited scientist (in my field), but have diligently avoided publishing in, or refereeing articles for (by-rules for-free) any any Elsevier-owned journal – for the entirety of my entire career.

    I also go to great pains to avoid citing anything that has appeared in an Elsevier scientific article. Surely the author said something similar somewhere else... or someone else said it...

    Elsevier are Copyright-vultures feeding off the free labor and hard work of scientists the world-over.

    1. Re:For you, Elsevier... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      It is very simple. If you want to have any career in science, you have to publish. No papers, no career. Publish or perish.

      Let's say you are a researcher at a public university, you are funded by the taxpayer. You just spent one year doing research and have found out something important that you want to publish. You write a submission and send it to a publisher. Elsevier then sends your submission to a reviewer, who is typically a researcher at another university. The reviewer works for free (his payment is that he gets to read the new research before other people).
      If your paper gets a positive review, then you will have to pay publication charges. Typically $ 100 to 500. Universities pay for these charges as well, they don't care much about them, because you, the taxpayer, will pick up the tab. Actually most projects come with a budget for said publication charges. honestly, when your paper gets accepted, you are so happy you wouldn't mind paying yourself. Finally your paper gets published. If you want to read a paper, you have to pay $30 for a pdf of a 2 page paper, or your university has to be a subscriber (10k/year).

      You could as well upload the paper to arxiv, who will publish it for free, but free publications don't count for your publication record.

      Scientific publishing is a license to print money. There is a lot of other stuff going on in the field, such as very low quality journals publishers create and then force libraries to subscribe to.

      The model extends to book publications as well. If you write a research monograph (these sell for $100 to $200 each), the publisher will often pay you nothing or a few hundred dollars.

    2. Re:For you, Elsevier... by Sir+Holo · · Score: 3, Informative

      but free publications don't count for your publication record.

      Where is that written?

      So your university won't 'count' free publication in your record? What's their reasoning behind that? (Follow the money.) 'Open source' peer review shouldn't be that difficult to set up if, as you say, reviewers work for free and the opportunity to get a 'first peek'.

      Anybody can post a "Lorem ipsum ..." or other nonsense document to the ArXiv. Hence, numerous hacks do exactly that, in a misguided attempt to build up the "casual-glance" value of their CV's list of publications. The great thing about the ArXiv is that it plants a flag in the ground, recording the date that you uploaded it. This helps to prevent you being 'scooped' by some other researcher working in the same area. At the same time as your ArXiv upload, you submit your final manuscript to a good journal. It might take a year for your publication to appear in a "peer-reviewed journal of record," so it's worth hedging your bets in this way. You see, it only matters who discovered and reported it first , in the long run.

      There are also, unfortunately, tons of outfits that create "journals" left and right. As long as you pay their high fees, they will publish whatever crap you have. Inferior researchers use these avenues to try to fool hiring managers and HR. Good researchers get to know the mainstream outlets, and the "shady" outlets. There are other metrics to refer to, just to be sure.

      Last, there are indeed some open-access, peer-reviewed journals, but not very many. A top journal in mathematics was the first one to make the jump, I believe. The entire editorial board resigned from the Elsevier-owned journal, and immediately formed a new journal with a very similar name. Everyone knew that the Editorial Board of this open-access journal was top-notch, as the story made the geek news, so they had no shortage of papers being submitted for possible publication.

      I have paid an "extra fee" on a few of my papers to make them "open access and permanently available on the journal's website." Otherwise, I just upload them to ResearchGate.com (or a co-author does) or to my own personal website. There are fair-use rules for academic sharing, and some journals are otherwise cool with the arrangement because it increases their readership.

    3. Re:For you, Elsevier... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It is not written down, but it is the absolutely established tradition in academia. The problem is that most work is so incredibly complex, that potential employers don't want to bother actually reading through your stuff and evaluating it. They rely on the reviewers.

      In each field, there is a list of journals of decreasing importance, called 'impact factor'. Nature and Science are two of the top journals, then there are journals of professional organization (IEEE, AIP), Elsevier journals are mostly on the lower rungs.

      When you apply for a job, you have to submit a list of your papers. They go through the list, and if you don't have >x publications in high impact factor journals, your application goes straight into the recycle bin. No one will bother to read your articles at that stage, and blog posts or similar are not even considered, because they are not peer reviewed (peer review has its own problems).

      I think the main problem is that *scientists actually are not bothered enough by the system*. Any scientist who is bothered will be weeded out quickly. They are under tremendous pressure (probably only 1 in 100 science graduates get an academic job), and they don't need to shell out the money personally. Their publication charges are covered by their grants, their journal subscriptions are paid for by the universities.
      If you give a scientist at the beginning of his career the choice to publish with Elsevier or not publish, he will wisely chose to publish.

      A lot of scientists complain, but the system is working ok for them, they don't pay the bills and have other problems. Also, if you are part of the academic bourgeoisie, you have no problem accessing knowledge. It is all paid for, available in the library.

      The people who are really fucked are the unwashed members of the general public. If one of your loved ones gets cancer and you want to read about the latest medical research, you better hand over a lot of money - for research that you already paid for with your taxes.

  7. Re:Doomed by nbauman · · Score: 2

    While I am all in favor of the defendants, I cannot see how they could win that case.

    There are two parts to winning a case in court. The first part is getting a judgment. The second part is collecting the judgment.

    It's tough to collect judgments from the former Soviet Union.

  8. And what I want by ChromeAeonium · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They want money for 'damages?' Well I want access to the research that MY tax payer dollars payed for. These papers are not being stolen by Sci-Hub, they are being ransomed by the leeches at Elsevier. You can't steal something that is already rightfully belongs to you. These papers rightfully belong to the people. It's completely ridiculous that I or anyone else should have to pay money for a paper three decades old, or pay for something because their institution does not have that particular subscription, or pay for anything else that they already, through their taxes, paid for.

    Fuck Elsevier. They are nothing more than a drain on the system. The free sharing of knowledge is one integral to the values of science. If promoting science, and getting what you are paid for, are piracy, then long live scientific piracy.

  9. Put the accepted manuscript on arXiv.org by Palms1111 · · Score: 2

    Most journals allow you to post your accepted manuscript on an archive site or your personal website, usually immediately or sometimes after an embargo period of a year. If everyone did this, then it doesn't really matter what journal you publish in, your papers are still freely available to anyone.

  10. RIP Aaron Swartz by erlando · · Score: 3, Informative

    Aaron Swartz lost this battle. Hopefully others will prevail.

    --
    Remember, there are no stupid questions. But there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.
  11. This Isn't Like Music or Movie Piracy by notsteve · · Score: 2

    Without Sci-Hub and Libgen, I literally could not have completed my PhD thesis. My University's system's to access papers was broken, and so time-consuming to use, that it made accessing papers nearly impossible. I'm as anti-piracy as they get, but in this case, Elsevier does not create anything, and adds very little value. As someone who publishers papers, I do not want a company selling them. I am not compensated. My university is not compensated. The editors of the publication are not compensated. There are some a few cases where journals have legitimate expenses. And in this case, those people should be paid. But generally, there are no costs to review and publish academic papers. And it goes against the spirit of science to impose them on readers. As a music producer, the situation is very different—we all want (and need) to be paid for our work—the artists, engineers, producers, record labels—everyone involved in the process of creating and delivering music. But as a scientist, this is bullshit.

  12. Can't live without it by Maury+Markowitz · · Score: 2

    I write Wiki articles about historical science topics. Much of this I get from back issues of magazines like Scientific American (which, for the younger in the crowd, used to be pretty serious) and IEEE Spectrum and similar industry magazines, but also a journal article here and there.

    The commercial value of these articles is zero. They are invariably about obsolete systems that are no longer used. In fact, many of the articles, like Mauchly's article on computer storage systems, have fallen into the public domain. Yet they remain paywalled.

    Without sci-hub I could not produce the quality articles I write. That is bad for society. That loss is far worse than the zero dollars the journals would gain.