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Sci-Hub Faces $4.8 Million Piracy Damages and ISP Blocking (torrentfreak.com)
The American Chemical Society (ACS), a leading source of academic publications in the field of chemistry, accused Sci-Hub of mass copyright infringement and is demanding $4.8 million in piracy damages. "Sci-Hub was made aware of the legal proceedings but did not appear in court," reports Torrent Freak. "As a result, a default was entered against the site, and a few days ago ACS specified its demands, which include $4.8 million in piracy damages." The complaint comes soon after the pirate site was ordered to pay $15 million in piracy damages to academic publisher Elsevier. From the report: "Here, ACS seeks a judgment against Sci-Hub in the amount of $4,800,000 -- which is based on infringement of a representative sample of publications containing the ACS Copyrighted Works multiplied by the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 for each publication," they write. "Sci-Hub's unabashed flouting of U.S. Copyright laws merits a strong deterrent. This Court has awarded a copyright holder maximum statutory damages where the defendant's actions were "clearly willful' and maximum damages were necessary to 'deter similar actors in the future.'" The publisher notes that the maximum statutory damages are only requested for 32 of its 9,000 registered works. This still adds up to a significant sum of money, of course, but that is needed as a deterrent, ACS claims.
Although the deterrent effect may sound plausible in most cases, another $4.8 million in debt is unlikely to worry Sci-Hub's owner, as she can't pay it off anyway. However, there's also a broad injunction on the table that may be more of a concern. The requested injunction prohibits Sci-Hub's owner to continue her work on the site. In addition, it also bars a wide range of other service providers from assisting others to access it. Specifically, it restrains "any Internet search engines, web hosting and Internet service providers, domain name registrars, and domain name registries, to cease facilitating access to any or all domain names and websites through which Defendant Sci-Hub engages in unlawful access to [ACS's works]."
Although the deterrent effect may sound plausible in most cases, another $4.8 million in debt is unlikely to worry Sci-Hub's owner, as she can't pay it off anyway. However, there's also a broad injunction on the table that may be more of a concern. The requested injunction prohibits Sci-Hub's owner to continue her work on the site. In addition, it also bars a wide range of other service providers from assisting others to access it. Specifically, it restrains "any Internet search engines, web hosting and Internet service providers, domain name registrars, and domain name registries, to cease facilitating access to any or all domain names and websites through which Defendant Sci-Hub engages in unlawful access to [ACS's works]."
But I am finding it hard to find a place in my heart to enable companies to "own" published scientific research. If you're a scientist and you publish your findings, it should be free. Period. That doesn't stop someone from commercializing the fruits of their research according to the opaque patent laws around the globe, but the actual scientific discovery ought to be public and free.
Best,
I recently discovered sci-hub. The shear amount of knowledge accessible through it is astounding. These are things I'd never have had access to before due to location and financial reasons (some websites won't let me buy their stuff from my country, and I don't really have that kind of money to be flinging around paying for random papers and what not).
If we actually cared about our species as a whole, this sort of information would be freely available to those that seek it. I hope sci-hub can ignore these silly demands and continue improving their website. Fuck the ACS. They don't even sound like they were significantly affected by it.
.free the world's knowledge from these paywall-mongers for the betterment of personkind. How very dare she.
Requiem for the American Dream
The cost of publishing is basically nothing if you do it on the web and we academics already provide all the reviewing and correction of the content.
As part of a scientific conference I run, I act as a publisher for the proceedings. I can assure you that the cost of publishing is absolutely NOT "basically nothing". If you were to properly account for all of our costs, it would run about $2000 per article. That includes things like salaries for editors and support staff, honoraria for reviewers (yes, we pay them), typesetting, office rent, electricity, web hosting, etc. For us, it does NOT include profit, as we exist as, essentially, an unofficial society.
Now, you can make the argument that the scientists are doing all of the work in generating the content. Yes, I agree. But the value that a publisher brings to bear is (a) mangement of the peer-review process, (b) a proper typesetting and consistent format --- and believe me, even if you provide incredibly rigid and explicit instructions, people figure out how to screw it up a dozen ways from Sunday, (c) a reputation for publishing only high-quality work, (d) recognition within the field that if someone associates themselves with our event, our reputation rubs off a little on them (and, yes, it's a two-way street: by selecting only high-quality work, we get a good reputation and vice-versa), and (e) indexing of your article.
So, where should that $2000 per article funding come from, exactly? It is far from "basically nothing", especially in the aggregate. If you disagree, I challenge you to start and run your own high-quality publication for a decade in a financially responsible way. I have.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
They should have asked for the full $1,350,000,000 that the law allows. That would demonstrate how ridiculous it is to hold scientific knowledge hostage for payments to a publisher.
So, where should that $2000 per article funding come from, exactly? It is far from "basically nothing", especially in the aggregate. If you disagree, I challenge you to start and run your own high-quality publication for a decade in a financially responsible way. I have.
There are many options. It does have to get paid for, but copyright may not be the best way to do it--in fact, we know it isn't, because it restrict access to information that is literally there to advance human knowledge. Perhaps schools and individuals who wish to publish could subscribe to publishing cooperatives, for example.
In the alternative, scientific papers could more sensibly be treated like patents--a short period of monopoly, followed by public use.
The big problem is the politics of trying to get it done, not that there's any intrinsic preference for copyright-based pricing of access to scientific knowledge.
Real lawyers write in C++
Many of the things you're talking about doing as an editor are not... valuable. The idea that there is value in prestige for publishing has been a disaster for science. This is a concept that is only about 40 years old, it is not some great tradition of science. Prestige publishing is immensely useful to professors and publishers, but not anyone else. We are at a historic low point for production of science that is useful or interesting to the general public when looking at per scientist or per dollar spent. We are epically failing to identify, execute, and communicate important research. In short, scientists and publishers do not know what "high quality" means anymore! Our current definition is incorrect!
Typesetting, formatting, web-hosting, indexing... if the authors and funders of the paper are not willing to do these things well, the work is not worth publishing. Think about what it means for the people funding research to abandon responsibility for it to someone else. I keep either open license or white paper manuscript versions of as many of my papers as I can on my website - that website also has significant SEO and search indexing work put into it. I do that because my funders insist on it, because they believe in the value of the work. It is truly eye-opening when your funder actually values your work. NSF, DOE, DoD, and NIH all manage or fund repositories of all of the reports produced by their grants going back decades (most not available online because of lobbying by publishers). Sci-Hub has a limited lifetime until these various agencies finish their transition to publicly available hosting of all of their funded results.
So what are you providing, really? Prestige publishing is a marketing tool for your journal, not a value for science. Hosting and formatting is something that should be done by any competent scientific funder. It should worry all of us that it is necessary for you to do this. That leaves us with peer review and editing.
These are valuable additions to a paper, but these functions can also be accomplished differently. The most traditional approach for review, the face-to-face meeting with experts, is why you have the conference in the first place. People are paying you to take part in that process! Either the conference is not functioning as a place to seriously discuss research (maybe save those honoraria for good session moderators), or peer review of the conference papers is simply a hoop-jumping exercise.
As part of the scientific community who has published many articles, I can affirm that the above poster is exaggerating at best. Since the age of the word processor, the author does the lions share of the type setting. In fact, I have had articles sent back for revision if the type setting was wrong. So, I am not sure what all these high paid graphics artists are doing.
Now, I have also reviewed hundreds of articles. I guess I really did not get the memo, because I was not paid for a single one. Maybe in the above posters magical journal, they pay reviews, but in my experience it is a service that one has to do gratis, if they want grant money from a federal agency. If I am wrong, i am happy to send a bill
As for the rest of the arguments, all I can say is that circles are circular because they are circles. If one creates a system with an arbitrary number of cost centers at an arbitrary cost, then they can get an arbitrary value for their production fee. For example, many journals are located in DC or New York. While I am sure this is a lot of fun for the editor, it is not necessary. I am pretty sure in a world of interconnected supply chains, one could base in somewhere cheap like West Virginia, pay negligible rent and pay the editor less since it is a cheap place to live. Suddenly, the costs go down.
BTW, the editor's main job is to find reviewers and to see if the article fits the scope of the journal. Despite the title, there is very little editing of typos etc going on from that position. Some journals also have people do this gratis, for the ability to have a better chance to get grants, of course.
To put this in further perspective, the poster claims over $2000 per article. Using an example I know well, the journal of physical chemistry has about 30-40 articles per issue. So, this means each issue is costing 60-80K dollars. In comparison, a comic book has a break even point of about $20,000/issue. These are in full color, based in New York, and they have to pay all their artists and authors. Since a comic book costs about 3 dollars, this means they are doing this for less than the poster's journal, who gets all their material for free. Something doesn't add up.
Did I mention that the authors of the article have to pay to be published? Just saying...
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.