Apr 23, 2022 05:28 PM
https://www.openmindmag.org/articles/who...-knowledge
INTRO: When legality trumps ethics it is society’s loss. A court case in India, pitting the upstart pirate websites Sci-Hub and Libgen (Library Genesis) against the global giants of peer-reviewed publishing, should help decide a critical issue: whether scientific information should be available only for a fee, or available free to citizens who are already funding it with their tax money and to the rest of the world.
As repositories of tens of millions of research papers and other scientific articles, many of them normally available only behind paywalls, the pirate sites do technically venture beyond copyright laws. But in doing so they also reveal, as Mr. Bumble of Oliver Twist fame discovered, that the law is sometimes an ass.
Publicly funded research routinely ends up in journals that cost thousands of dollars a year to read. This barrier to access cuts off poorer institutions, independent researchers, and the general public from the scientific insights “protected” by this very profitable system. Websites like Sci-Hub and Libgen give readers free access to these resources without a commercial interest of their own.
Yet both sites are currently being sued in India for copyright violation by Wiley, the American Chemical Society, and Elsevier, all well-known publishers of academic journals. This is not the first time big corporations have tried to shut the websites down.
Sci-Hub was first sued by Elsevier in the United States in 2015 in one of the most significant copyright cases of this century. In that case, the legal system ruled that Sci-Hub infringed on Elsevier’s copyright, handing down $15 million in fines. This was followed by lawsuits in Europe, which led to Sci-Hub domains being blocked by ISPs in Sweden, the United Kingdom, Russia, Belgium, and France. Both Sci-Hub and Libgen are also on the European Commission’s piracy watch list.
Even though Sci-Hub’s founder, Alexandra Elbakyan, has never appeared in court or paid the fines, the URL has been blocked or deactivated several times. However, the website endures, thanks to mirrors and proxies. (Sci-Hub and Libgen are constantly changing their URLs to stay one step ahead of challenges, keeping the doors open through ever-shifting domains worldwide.)
The issue, however, is not whether the sites are guilty of copyright violation. The real question is this: Why is peer-reviewed scientific research, much of it funded by taxpayers, locked up behind paywalls in the first place?
Academic publishers argue that their long-held subscription-based models are essential to protecting the sanctity and quality of scientific knowledge... (MORE - details)
INTRO: When legality trumps ethics it is society’s loss. A court case in India, pitting the upstart pirate websites Sci-Hub and Libgen (Library Genesis) against the global giants of peer-reviewed publishing, should help decide a critical issue: whether scientific information should be available only for a fee, or available free to citizens who are already funding it with their tax money and to the rest of the world.
As repositories of tens of millions of research papers and other scientific articles, many of them normally available only behind paywalls, the pirate sites do technically venture beyond copyright laws. But in doing so they also reveal, as Mr. Bumble of Oliver Twist fame discovered, that the law is sometimes an ass.
Publicly funded research routinely ends up in journals that cost thousands of dollars a year to read. This barrier to access cuts off poorer institutions, independent researchers, and the general public from the scientific insights “protected” by this very profitable system. Websites like Sci-Hub and Libgen give readers free access to these resources without a commercial interest of their own.
Yet both sites are currently being sued in India for copyright violation by Wiley, the American Chemical Society, and Elsevier, all well-known publishers of academic journals. This is not the first time big corporations have tried to shut the websites down.
Sci-Hub was first sued by Elsevier in the United States in 2015 in one of the most significant copyright cases of this century. In that case, the legal system ruled that Sci-Hub infringed on Elsevier’s copyright, handing down $15 million in fines. This was followed by lawsuits in Europe, which led to Sci-Hub domains being blocked by ISPs in Sweden, the United Kingdom, Russia, Belgium, and France. Both Sci-Hub and Libgen are also on the European Commission’s piracy watch list.
Even though Sci-Hub’s founder, Alexandra Elbakyan, has never appeared in court or paid the fines, the URL has been blocked or deactivated several times. However, the website endures, thanks to mirrors and proxies. (Sci-Hub and Libgen are constantly changing their URLs to stay one step ahead of challenges, keeping the doors open through ever-shifting domains worldwide.)
The issue, however, is not whether the sites are guilty of copyright violation. The real question is this: Why is peer-reviewed scientific research, much of it funded by taxpayers, locked up behind paywalls in the first place?
Academic publishers argue that their long-held subscription-based models are essential to protecting the sanctity and quality of scientific knowledge... (MORE - details)