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Judge Recommends ISP and Search Engine Blocking of Sci-Hub in the US (torrentfreak.com)
Sci-Hub, which is regularly referred to as the "Pirate Bay of Science," faces one of the strongest anti-piracy injunctions we have seen in the US to date, reports TorrentFreak. From the article: Earlier this year the American Chemical Society (ACS), a leading source of academic publications in the field of chemistry, filed a lawsuit against Sci-Hub and its operator Alexandra Elbakyan. Sci-Hub was made aware of the legal proceedings but did not appear in court. As a result, a default was entered against the site. In addition to millions of dollars in damages, ACS also requested third-party Internet intermediaries to take action against the site. While the request is rather unprecedented for the US, as it includes search engine and ISP blocking, Magistrate Judge John Anderson has included these measures in his recommendations. Judge Anderson agrees that Sci-Hub is guilty of copyright and trademark infringement. In addition to $4,800,000 in statutory damages, he recommends a broad injunction that would require search engines, ISPs, domain registrars and other services to block Sci-Hub's domain names. If the U.S. District Court Judge adopts this recommendation, it would mean that Internet providers such as Comcast could be ordered to block users from accessing Sci-Hub.
But publicly funded research should be available to the public.
As I understand it: Under US law, if you contact a court to contest jurisdiction, you've conceded that the court has jurisdiction if it decides that it does. So there isn't a good way for someone out of a court's jurisdiction to contest jurisdiction up front. This lets plaintiffs go court shopping (for courts that are cheap for them and expensive for their defendants and likely to rule in their favor if the case goes to trial) and get unconscionable default judgements if a defendant protects his/her rights by declining to appear or correspond with the court. Then it's up to the defendant to fight off attempts to enforce the execution of the judgement.
That is my understanding as well. However, there is a wrinkle here and that is in order for the remedy to be executed, ACS is going to have to compel DNS registries and ISP's to comply with the order and that's where it's going to get weird. The parties being compelled can claim to not be parties to the case which they are not and therefore there are no grounds to compel them to do what ACS is asking. ACS then has no other recourse but to file a motion to be granted a hearing to present the Motion to Compel to yet another judge to make the case for the judge to issue an order directly to the opposing parties. If the hearing is granted, the opposing parties WILL show up with some very high caliber legal representation to contest the Motion to Compel. I think either one of two things will happen 1) ACS will get sent home packing with a useless order the is unenforceable or 2) It will go all the way to Supreme Court. ACS will be fighting with for example Comcast and AT&T at this point not SciHub. It is all rather silly.
We'll make great pets