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French ISPs Ordered To Block Sci-Hub, LibGen (torrentfreak.com)
The High Court of Paris has ordered several of the largest French ISPs to block access to the pirate libraries LibGen and Sci-Hub. "The decision is a setback for the sites that have come under increasing pressure, but Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan believes that determined researchers are smart enough to find an alternative route to her site," reports TorrentFreak. From the report: Following a complaint from academic publishers Elsevier and Springer Nature, Internet providers Bouygues, Free, Orange, and SFR have been ordered (PDF) to block access to Sci-Hub and LibGen sites for the year to come. In its decision, picked up by Next INpact, the French court ruled that the two sites "clearly claim to be pirate platforms rejecting the principle of copyright and bypassing publishers' subscription access portals."
The court order targets a total of 57 domain names, including various mirror sites. The academic publishers had asked the court for a more flexible blocklist, which they could update whenever new domains would become available, but this was denied. If the publishers want to expand the blocklist, they will have to go back to court. This ensures that there remains judicial oversight over local website blockades. Also, a request for a specific IP-address block was denied. The court sided with the ISPs, who argued that they should have the freedom to choose their own blocking method, including DNS blocking. That does mean, however, that the ISPs will also have to bear the costs. "The blockade will have some effect, though not very profound," says Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakya. "The people who are using Sci-Hub because they need access to research can still unblock it using VPN, TOR and etc."
The court order targets a total of 57 domain names, including various mirror sites. The academic publishers had asked the court for a more flexible blocklist, which they could update whenever new domains would become available, but this was denied. If the publishers want to expand the blocklist, they will have to go back to court. This ensures that there remains judicial oversight over local website blockades. Also, a request for a specific IP-address block was denied. The court sided with the ISPs, who argued that they should have the freedom to choose their own blocking method, including DNS blocking. That does mean, however, that the ISPs will also have to bear the costs. "The blockade will have some effect, though not very profound," says Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakya. "The people who are using Sci-Hub because they need access to research can still unblock it using VPN, TOR and etc."
When the government wants something censored, they go to the ISPs, not Google or Facebook. We need a way around the damage.
This is a good thing! Let's give them more support!
Cough, unblocked.krd, cough.
@ThePirateProxy lists the latest domain.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Thank you. Downloading now. FYI, I think a couple of ACs were asking where to find your software in the previous two stories.
Elsevier and Springer Nature should be boycotted by authors and readers alike. They are parasites leeching off the work of others. They actively work to interfere with efforts to minimize the harm that they do. It is time we use the internet to eliminate the scientific community's need of there services.
In the USA you have the freedom from big gov to share, comment on and publish your ideas.
In the USA you have the right to talk about code, crypto, science, math, DRM, science, the arts, politics.
France should send a new Alexis de Tocqueville to the free USA to bring back some ideas on freedom of the press and freedom after publication.
Under the EU and in France the ability to read, comment and publish is something that is controlled and only granted to some people.
Enjoy the US freedom to publish, self publish, comment, link, talk about, critique. To review and put own your own theory.
Free from brands, gov, mil, NGOs, the politics of educational institution, the EU, a French gov and think tanks.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
publishers. Scientists don't make any money on science publications. You write for free (or sometimes are asked to pay a fee), you edit and format your article, you're expected to do peer review for free, and when your own articles get published you not only surrender your "copyright" to them, you are even expected by the greedy lawyers to pony up to access them yourself. And the fees are, indeed, exuberant.
Ages ago, when distribution of scientific articles was mostly on paper, and "scientific publishing" was not a lawyer-run money-grabbing monopoly, those "journals" may have had some positive impact.
This is no longer the case today. Today, those assholes sit on stuff that should have been public domain for ages, stuff that isn't theirs, and use part of their outrageous income to bribe politicians to extend their monopoly, hoping to eventually extend it into perpetuity.
The good news is that in many fields they are already irrelevant, or becoming irrelevant fast. The community is creating their own, open-access journals online, and new metrics of academic goodness dispense with the super-promoted and meaningless indices based on perceived paid journals "prestige" factors.
Fuck yourselves with a rusty rebar, assholes.
The decision is a setback for the sites that have come under increasing pressure,
No, it is not a setback for those sites. They don't gain anything by people using them, and don't lose anything by getting blocked. It is a setback for all the scientists and scientifically minded people who cannot afford the exorbitant fees the journals charge, and now have more barriers to accessing (largely publicly funded) research results.
Let the frogs have their new censored Utopia.
How is Paris doing these days? It seems parts of that city are effectively off limits to it's citizens.
Australia started something similar, last year. Thankfully, ISPs take the lazy option of a DNS re-direct. In the interests of not giving those ISPs more power, I urge the interested people to discover the answer.
It's pre-Gutenberg in science land. If you don't have a backer with deep pockets, scientific materials are out of reach.
And it's a shame I have to resort to unauthorized distribution channels to access certain research.
In the age of information, is there any reason to create the sort of roadblocks and barriers in front of valuable research? (aside from the obvious profit motive) What value is gained?
Lots of "real" scientists here. This is a serious question, and I'm pointing it at you.
Also, does your publicly funded work also get the current authors life + 70 years of copyright protection?
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Seriously, Sci-Hub is the best thing since sliced bread for the average Joe. If I read some interesting science news, I can just go and read up the research it's based on, I don't need to have access to university library. Publishers and serious researchers aren't really affected, university libraries already have all the subscriptions and they are paying the fees and academics have access through the libraries. A bit of piracy really changes nothing in that system.
I wonder how many French universities are using private ISPs...
Video of some good progressive thrash music
Thank you Elsevier and Springer Nature for providing us with a helpful list of the most useful libraries of free science publications!
You're welcome & they were so I pointed them to the program for Linux &/or Windows as I did you https://developers.slashdot.or...
* Enjoy, sorry for late reply (next a.m.)
APK
P.S.=> "Onwards & UPWARDS"... apk
So maybe this use case could be a non-scam use for blockchain - the most useful thing the journals do in the internet era is sort of authentication; they curate papers from reputable sources and sort of help facilitate the peer review. This gets hard to do when you decentralize, so maybe a blockchain can be utilized to manage the peer credentialing that elevates the impact of a paper.
...the Streisand effect?
PS: Thanks for the links to those two sites, didn't know about them before. I do now. :)
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Hosts can get you past a dns block list easily (not other methods though) via hardcoded favorite sites you spend most time @ (or ones blocked by DNS blocklists) + protects you from DNS requestlog tracking OR dns down OR WORSE (dns redirect poisonings going on lately, bad US DHS issues DNS redirect is HUGE danger (not w/ hosts vs.) https://threatpost.com/gov-war... & ICANN ISSUES SAME WARNING https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... ) & my:
APK Hosts File Engine 2.0++ 64-bit for Linux h t t p : / / a p k . i t - m a t e . c o . u k / A P K H o s t s F i l e E n g i n e F o r L i n u x . z i p
APK Hosts File Engine 10++ SR-1 32/64-bit for Windows https://hosts-file.net/?s=Down...
* Make that a BREEZE to achieve from a nice easy to use GUI program that's a multithreaded & multiplatform system!
APK
P.S.=> Enjoy!... apk
This thread must be the one with the most comments moderated informative / insightful in the history of slashdot.
My ISP Bahnhof here in Sweden was ordered the same thing. They decided to block Elsevier web properties as well for good measure.