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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.
This would mean the blocking access to publicly funded science. This is a first ammendment violation. (this part of the ruling would be.)
Usually what happens in just about every court proceeding is that the plaintiff's attorney files a motion usually leading to a hearing unless the parties settle the matter beforehand. During the court proceedings the plaintiff presents to the judge an order that they believe will resolve the issue. If the defendant doesn't show up (which is the case here) to contest the order that has been presented by the plaintiff, unless the judge really understands the order (which I suspect they may not understand the internet in this case), they may be inclined to use the plaintiff's proposed order and enter it as a default judgment. Otherwise, I'm not sure how a judge could have thought that this is an appropriate remedy to the issue. The judge is asking entities who are not parties to the case to perform actions that constitute the remedy.
We'll make great pets
I mean, after all, what else is the job of a search engine, a social network, or an ISP but to ensure that information is well regulated, vetted, controlled, licensed, checked, filtered, screened, sliced, diced, and pureed?
Check your premises.
... and so the censorship begins...
Not to mention Streisand Effecting it into well known status.
I never knew about the site until they sued. Go figure.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
If you don't like the result, you'll need a different argument, because while the Constitution only authorizes the federal government to do about a dozen pecific things, protecting copyright is one of those twelve things:
Article 1 - Section 8, powers of the federal government (clause 8):
âoeTo promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.â
You might advocate for a statute saying that any papers which in any way relate to any research which benefitted from any taxpayer funding must be placed in the public domain. The practical effect of that would be debatable and hard to predict, but it would be a cogent proposal. Pretending that the Constitution says the opposite of what it says in Section 8 is not a reasonable argument.
Public-funding of science means the scientific output is public property. Outfits like Nature have been raking it in charging people outrageous subscriptions to access data that in vast majority of cases is connected/paid/dependent on public monies. That racket cannot last forever.
And when it comes to copyright, when does it stop with science? Is a classic like On the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox royalty-free given it was published in 1964? Does Alain Aspect owe the Bell estate royalties? This is all so much horseshit.
Aaron Swartz did not die just to have this still happen.
You know what i've never seen anyone say, but that's sad/true? As someone who has access to journals legally, it's actually -easier- to find the articles i'm looking for through scihub a lot of the time.. how sad is that?
I'm thinking along the lines of a DHT. Then you should be able to cobble up a DNS server that goes to the alternate system if lookup in DNS fails. Slightly easier than editing /etc/hosts.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
So that judge thinks it's OK for publishers to claim copyright on public property that they didn't pay for?
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
Luckily, these are scientists, they know how easy it is to circumvent those laughable measures.
>That applies to YOUR papers. If your employer paid you to sit in their office and use their computer to write something for their use about their research, it may be their paper. Your right would be getting the pay check.
I am talking loosely about the papers I have authored. Yes my employer pays me to sit in an office and do stuff. They also agreed to let me (and indeed encouraged me) to submit papers to journals to describe results. The reason for submitting to journals is to make the information available.
Having those papers then locked behind extremely expensive paywalls is counter to the interests of the company who paid for it, the authors who did the work and wrote it, the unpaid reviewers who checked it and the people who would like to read it. We are moderately picky about picking journals that have open access but there are no company imposed rules concerning that.
If the paper is also available through scihub, then the interests of all those people are better met.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.