Slashdot Mirror
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."
Cough, unblocked.krd, cough.
@ThePirateProxy lists the latest domain.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
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.
It's pre-Gutenberg in science land. If you don't have a backer with deep pockets, scientific materials are out of reach.
is there any reason to create the sort of roadblocks and barriers in front of valuable research
Honest answer: it's part of a bigger problem. If you want a job, you need to publish papers. If you want to publish papers, you have to do it in the major journals. It's called 'publish or perish' and it is killing academic science. But a lot of people in charge are too damned lazy to do anything about it, even though everyone with two brain cells to rub together knows it is terrible.
So people do it because they have to. If you do the right thing, if you take a stand and refuse to play that game, you will not be rewarded for it. Someone else will get the job. Sad fact of the matter.
The journals meanwhile are all too willing to play ball, and charge obscene fees for the papers that are published in the journals. They surely know the stupid culture of science that enables this, so they've got a lot of people kind of backed into a corner here.
If that sounds stupid to you, that's because it is. But that's why it happens.