Sci-Hub 'Pirate Bay For Scientists' Sued by American Chemical Society Over Cloned Site (ibtimes.co.uk)

The American Chemistry Society (ACS) is now suing Sci-Hub, the so-called "Pirate Bay for Scientists," over copyright infringement and counterfeiting, and is asking the courts to grant an injunction against the website in the US. From a report: Following the news that academic publisher Elsevier won a legal judgement of $15m in damages against Sci-Hub for allowing people to illegally download peer-reviewed academic papers for free, the world's largest scientific society ACS has filed its own lawsuit in the state of Virginia against the website. ACS is complaining that in addition to making hundreds of thousands of research papers owned by the society freely available, Sci-Hub has also cloned its website and is infringing its trademarks by operating two almost-identical replicas of the ACS website at pubs.acs.org.sci-hub.cc and acs.org.secure.sci-hub.cc.

Comments

Default Judgement

[Luthair]

It should be noted that the judgement Elsvier won was a default judgement because SciHub didn't appear... because they aren't a US entity.

Re:Default Judgement

[MightyYar]

Even if they broke a US law, it is pretty meaningless without jurisdiction, isn't it? I guess if SciHub ever travels to the US, SciHub is in double-big-big trouble!

Re:Default Judgement

[ChromeAeonium]

You're not wrong. Sci-Hub is in violation of the law, no doubt about that. Morally though, I absolutely could not care less, and think that what is really wrong is hoarding knowledge in the form of the tax payer funded publications which Sci-Hub is now making accessible for all.

I hope the Sci-Hub founder that Elsevier is after is never extradited. What she's doing is making the world a better place.

Re:Default Judgement

[ooloorie]

FYI:

Following a lawsuit brought in the US by the publisher Elsevier, Elbakyan [the SciHub founder] is presently in hiding due to the risk of extradition;[16] Elsevier has been granted a $15 million injunction against her.[17] According to a 2016 interview, her neuroscience research is on hold, but she has enrolled in a history of science master’s program at a “small private university” in an undisclosed location.

Note also that Elsevier is a Dutch publisher, headquartered in Amsterdam. Maybe the US should tell Elsevier to go f*ck themselves and file those lawsuits in Europe rather than the US. Why should the US always take the political crap that results from European publishers suing people?

Re:Default Judgement

[chipschap]

Elsevier makes even Microsoft look like good guys.

Re:Default Judgement

[ooloorie]

It should be noted that the judgement Elsvier won was a default judgement because SciHub didn't appear... because they aren't a US entity.

Neither Elsevier nor SciHub are US entities.

It's annoying that non-US entities are trolling each other in the US legal system.

Re:Default Judgement

[stephanruby]

It may be meaningful. Such a judgment may make it easier to get the site delisted from US-based search engines. It may also make it easier to cut off Visa/Mastercard donations to the site and possibly stop other forms of revenues coming from US-based companies.

Also, when the leader of the Republic of Kazakhstan dies, he's 76 years old now. There will be two factions, a Russian-alignment faction and a US/NATO-alignment faction. If the US/NATO faction wins, and if US troops can be placed there before Russia invades (which won't be easy), many people in Kazakhstan will be relieved, but that that doesn't mean that the woman who created SciHub won't go to prison for the rest of her natural life.

Just take a look at what the US forced Colombia to do. 8 years of prison for sharing a single scientific article. Just imagine what punishment they would push for SciHub (which is one of the largest repositories of scientific articles in the world). Maybe 5 million years in prison? Summary execution? I don't know. But if Kazhakstan gets in bed with the US, that woman needs to drop everything she's doing and defect to Russia.

Re:Default Judgement

[Z00L00K]

Because money talks - even courts can profit from cases they process.

Re:Default Judgement

[Anonymous Coward]

There are absolutely a lot of reforms that need to happen with scientific journals. However, in the case of scientific publications, a significant amount of that information may be available freely in other places, such as conference proceedings that are freely available online. Preprints and even recorded presentations are often posted online and made freely available. At least one professional society I know of makes all publications freely available from closed access journals after three years.

The bigger issue, IMO, is the Bayh-Dole Act, which I find far more outrageous. This allows universities to patent research from federally-funded research, with the only requirement that the federal government be free to use the work without paying royalties. These patents may then be auctioned off by the universities and bought up by patent trolls.

I'd definitely like to see some requirement that closed access journals only remain closed for a limited amount of time. If federal awards require that published papers be open access after a certain amount of time, journals will change their policies rather than lose those papers altogether. However, this should also be done alongside a repeal of the Bayh-Dole Act.

Re:Default Judgement

[Frosty Piss]

It should be noted that the judgement Elsvier won was a default judgement because SciHub didn't appear... because they aren't a US entity.

Neither Elsevier nor SciHub are US entities.

It's annoying that non-US entities are trolling each other in the US legal system.

Perhaps they know that only in the US courts will they get a favorable ruling in the tens of millions of dollars.

Re:Default Judgement

[drinkypoo]

How can you be so sure about the details of Kazakhstan copyright law?

Maybe he knows how to use google. I used "Kazakhstan berne convention" and got back a list of IP laws enacted by their legislature. Maybe you should learn to internet if you're going to post to slashdot.

Re:Default Judgement

[Rockoon]

You mean like the pipeline Assad refused to build for Saudi Arabia, causing the U.S. to start bombing Syria?

Science need to be free

[Anonymous Coward]

We pay our taxes. We want our money's worth. Give us our free science. NOW!

Re:ACS Well Known for Monetizing Information

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah really insightful shit man. Perhaps you could engage your brain instead of just blaming everything on the queens and the coons and the reds and the jews.

Research is typically funded via grants. Freely publishing papers does not mean that the researchers will not get paid. They already got paid well before the paper was ever published.

Closed access journals only exist to make information brokers rich. They do not fund further scientific investigation, or those who write the articles.

Not piracy

[ChromeAeonium]

I still do not believe what Sci-Hub does is legitimately piracy. Piracy is downloading something you did not pay for. If my tax dollars already paid for the institutional overhead, the scientist's salary, and the grant money, downloading the paper is merely getting what I am owed. Those who monetize science are the real pirates, demanding money for access to that which was created with our tax dollars, charging universities obscene fees for the privilege of allowing their students to read it, and denying scientists and students in poorer countries access to important research.

I've had issues getting papers from the 50's thanks to this outrageous copyright business...the publishers claim to somehow be of benefit to science, and that Sci-Hub harms science, but tell me, how does that benefit science, and how does allowing me or anyone else harm it?

Copyright be damned, suing them is like suing a cop who returns stolen property because it cuts into the thief's profits. I'm a scientist, and I say long live Sci-Hub.

Re:Not piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't.

At least, for the American research papers. Most of those are produced in part or in whole by academics who are at academic institutions that are funded by the government. Works by the government automatically go into the public domain except for certain, very specific circumstances (e.g. they're born classified). They are typically published along with their claimed academic affiliation and produced as part of their work obligations (professors are expected to do three things: teaching, research, and service, and this is research). Therefore, these are the works of public employees, and by extension government employees, and should be put in the public domain.

This of course does not get into the gross problems of copyright law in general, including (but far from limited to) the fact that, as-is, it's stealing en masse from the public by choking off the public domain. This is a blatant violation of the spirit of the Constitutional basis for intellectual property, to an extent so gross it that the "stealing" done by copyright infringement is basically chump change, no matter how much they whine about the "thieves," who are in fact legally not thieves of any kind. But research papers, at least those produced by most American academics, are an especially egregious example.

Re:Not piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

your not a scientist your a theif

Content producers are thieves. They've choked off the public domain by lobbying for the extension of "time limited" protection of their work far beyond the Constitutional provisions in the United States. The intention was that this burden upon the public - and yes, it's a burden on the public, as it was always intended to be a brief abridgment of the right to share information - would be endured for only a relatively brief period so the owner could make a reasonable profit. They have used their money to essentially buy Congress, and it's often been treated as a purchase before (see the response of content producers to the rather massive rejection of SOPA on the part of the American public). This doesn't cover the fact that many of these works are produced by government employees of the US and are, by default, in the public domain.

Of course, with the use of software EULAs, they're extending copyright in directions far worse than originally specified, and are trying to use it to force the public to do their bidding, essentially attacking the concept of property ownership by proxy. Plus, many of the time-honored whiny laments such as "you wouldn't work for free, would you" are grossly disproven by a lot of things, including the fact that copyright need not be destroyed, merely made short and sane, as well as the fact that there are in fact people who make large amounts of content for free, such as much of the software you use on a day-to-day basis, particularly if you do things on the web.

So yeah, I'll care about people who "steal" once all these problems are rectified. Your defense is of far larger and more dangerous thieves. I'll assume you've got a vested financial interest or listened to "don't copy that floppy" a few too many times, so I doubt I'll convince you, assuming you read this. But anyone else who's reading this, you might benefit if you consider these possibilities.

This discussion has come up on I2P...

[Anonymous Coward]

The general consensus was, whether i2p, tor, or another network, this data needs to be mirrored again, but this time it needs to be mirrored outside of a clearnet website, unable to be blocked by domain seizure, ip address blocking, or any other form of traceable legacy platform utilization.

If you agree, pick a network and start doing your part to mirror content today. Between the limited size of the networks, Windows 10 telemetry, and TrustZone/Management Engine proto-backdoors, who knows how long we will have, but now is the time to make a stand if you believe in freedom of information, limited life of copyright, and the need for society to collectively advance outside of the bounds of greed of the 'chosen few'.

Rebel today, or the freedom to rebel tomorrow will be taken from you!

Shall we start a pool?

[Applehu Akbar]

How many researchers are going to drop ACS membership because of this?

Backfire

[dane23]

Thanks American Chemistry Society. I had no idea, until your lawsuit pointed it out, that these sites existed. Time to start browsing through publicly funded research!