Most active commenters
  • kleiba(9)
  • megaloblasto(5)

←back to thread

Sci-Hub has been blocked in India

(sci-hub.se)
259 points the-mitr | 25 comments | 28 Aug 25 04:47 UTC | HN request time: 0.004s | source | bottom
Show context
megaloblasto ◴[28 Aug 25 12:10 UTC] No.45051186[source]▶
I have to read a lot of papers for work. Sometimes 2 or 3 a day. Often when I find one I'm interested in, they want $60 to read the one paper. If I have to read one paper a day, that's about $20,000 a year just to stay up to date with the science.

That's ridiculous. Thankfully someone is breaking down these barriers to science.

replies(6): >>45051247 #>>45051473 #>>45051583 #>>45052008 #>>45053224 #>>45053294 #
1. kleiba ◴[28 Aug 25 12:53 UTC] No.45051583[source]▶
Replace "paper" with anything else you consume in your everyday life. I know it's an unpopular opinion, but to me, if there's something offered to you for a certain price, and you're not ready to pay that price, the alternative should be to either get something comparable that's cheaper (hardly possible with scientific papers) or, unfortunately, abstain from getting that thing at all.

I don't see how "what they're charging is ridiculous, and the money isn't even going to the authors, so it's okay for me to get the papers through sci-hub" is morally justified.

Independent of the above: if it's for work, your employer should pay for the paper access (unless you're self-employed, of course).

replies(7): >>45051702 #>>45051710 #>>45051736 #>>45051786 #>>45052011 #>>45052524 #>>45052996 #
2. ahoka ◴[28 Aug 25 13:07 UTC] No.45051702[source]▶
Science brings humanity forward, your Netflix subscription does not. Simple as that. The former should not be the subject of economic rent.
replies(2): >>45051870 #>>45053328 #
3. pahool ◴[28 Aug 25 13:08 UTC] No.45051710[source]▶
Just because something has a price associated with it, that does not make the pricing model inherently correct or just. The majority of research papers, at least in the U.S., are (or historically have been, I don't know the data now under the current administration) publicly funded, one way or another. Publicly-funded research should not be behind paywalls.

https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb202326/funding-sources-of-acad...

replies(1): >>45053375 #
4. thrance ◴[28 Aug 25 13:10 UTC] No.45051736[source]▶
Profiteering is bad, even more so when it's about science. That's my moral justification. Using Sci-Hub is illegal, but far from immoral in my book.
replies(1): >>45053426 #
5. megaloblasto ◴[28 Aug 25 13:16 UTC] No.45051786[source]▶
That's what I tell diabetic patients struggling to afford insulin. "Hey that's the price, that's just how it is, if you don't like it, don't buy it"
replies(1): >>45053281 #
6. SkyBelow ◴[28 Aug 25 13:24 UTC] No.45051870[source]▶
Calling this economic rent, if anything, underplays the issue. The economics in play appear worse than what rent normally covers. The science is funded by other sources, often from the groups which want access, the scientists are not paid and many have to pay to publish. Reviewers are rarely if ever paid. Public ability to peruse science, something that is already limited by the difficulty of understanding the papers, is made far worse by the price tag. The value provided seems to mainly be some name recognition that has fed a publish or perish model that is arguably detrimental to science research at scale.

All considered, calling it economic rent appears too charitable an interpretation.

7. calf ◴[28 Aug 25 13:37 UTC] No.45052011[source]▶
Your unpopular opinion is fallacious, markets can fail and as a result grey/black markets arise. This sci-hub issue is plausible evidence of that. Moreover there are systems where markets could be entirely inappropriate. But there's no law of nature or god that tells us how to decide as a society. Indeed it is your very mention of consumerism that belies this presupposition.
replies(1): >>45053477 #
8. Eddy_Viscosity2 ◴[28 Aug 25 14:22 UTC] No.45052524[source]▶
> Replace "paper" with anything else you consume in your everyday life.

You eat apples, but if you replaced "apples" with "human babies", then by eating them you would be committing murder and cannibalism. It's an unpopular opinion, but this logical argument proves you are a murdering cannibalistic monster.

replies(2): >>45053138 #>>45053381 #
9. lotharcable ◴[28 Aug 25 14:56 UTC] No.45052996[source]▶
Copyright exists to protect publishers, not the people actually doing the work.

Copyright was created for the specific purpose of censorship.

replies(1): >>45053438 #
10. megaloblasto ◴[28 Aug 25 15:07 UTC] No.45053138[source]▶
Oh my god. I gotta stop eating apples.
11. kleiba ◴[28 Aug 25 15:17 UTC] No.45053281[source]▶
Please, let's stay real. How is comparing a vital drug even remotely comparable to scientific papers?
replies(3): >>45053337 #>>45053603 #>>45053729 #
12. kleiba ◴[28 Aug 25 15:20 UTC] No.45053328[source]▶
It does not matter if it should or shouldn't. Since someone else brought up insulin before, you could also argue that all medication should be free - alas it isn't.

It is totally fine to object the status quo of certain aspects of life or society. But in a democracy, the right way to go about changing them is not to just simply take what you can.

replies(1): >>45053775 #
13. megaloblasto ◴[28 Aug 25 15:21 UTC] No.45053337{3}[source]▶
$20,000 annually to keep up on the latest science makes it prohibitively expensive for most of the world to do meaningful science. If only the rich can do science then we miss out on crucial scientific advancements. Less scientific advancements means less people get life saving medicines, less environmental disasters are uncovered and dealt with.

Plus, I was just using your own logic of replacing "paper" with anything else that I might consume in my everyday life.

replies(1): >>45053499 #
14. kleiba ◴[28 Aug 25 15:24 UTC] No.45053375[source]▶
> Just because something has a price associated with it, that does not make the pricing model inherently correct or just.

And just because a pricing model is not correct or just does not automatically give you liberty to circumvent that pricing model. If you think that Nike shoes are overpriced and hey, there's Chinese counterfeits readily available, does not automatically make the latter legal or even morally justified.

replies(1): >>45057094 #
15. kleiba ◴[28 Aug 25 15:24 UTC] No.45053381[source]▶
Er, what?
replies(1): >>45053927 #
16. kleiba ◴[28 Aug 25 15:27 UTC] No.45053426[source]▶
Why is that? Most relevant research in AI is done outside of universities and instead by companies these days. Shouldn't they have the right to sell their findings? Their research is not funded by tax money.

(Note that that's not usually where the price tag for a research paper comes from these days, it's publishers charging for their added value. You might find it debatable whether said added value warrants the amount of money they ask for, but that's orthogonal to the underlying issue.)

replies(1): >>45054019 #
17. kleiba ◴[28 Aug 25 15:29 UTC] No.45053438[source]▶
If anything you could argue that copyright has shifted in that direction but it was certainly created originally to foster the development of art and science by protecting creators, not publishers.
18. kleiba ◴[28 Aug 25 15:31 UTC] No.45053477[source]▶
Why shouldn't we abolish any digital markets then, because in theory, you could have a service similar to sci-hub for books, movies, music... And these exist and existed (and are regularly shut down by the authorities).
19. kleiba ◴[28 Aug 25 15:33 UTC] No.45053499{4}[source]▶
I worked in research for decades - no idea where you get that $20,000 number from. Also, I cannot follow this argument of "only the rich can do science", this seems to bear any relation to reality.
replies(1): >>45054210 #
20. mistercheph ◴[28 Aug 25 15:52 UTC] No.45053729{3}[source]▶
You’re right, information is completely worthless, let’s turn off the state-backed monopoly on it!
21. mistercheph ◴[28 Aug 25 15:56 UTC] No.45053775{3}[source]▶
In a democracy that has been captured by massive commercial interests? Do you see any politicians ranting against the copyright system? Have a guess why?

They wield power unapologetically, Disney execs would actually kill people if they had to to get copyright terms extended, using dark libraries is a sensible response to the current state of affairs.

22. Eddy_Viscosity2 ◴[28 Aug 25 16:10 UTC] No.45053927{3}[source]▶
In the original comment, the argument is that if you replace papers with something else then you see that it stealing. But if you replace papers with something else, then you are no longer talking about scientific papers. So this is a flawed argument. The baby eating is to demonstrate how flawed.
23. thrance ◴[28 Aug 25 16:20 UTC] No.45054019{3}[source]▶
No one is selling their research through these papers. Researchers have to pay to publish their findings, and other researchers have to pay to access them. The only ones benefiting from this insane state of affairs are the journals, who are actively hampering the scientific process in the age of the internet.

> Shouldn't they have the right to sell their findings?

These companies make profit by selling actual products, and by patenting what findings may be profitable. I don't think they can even begin to recoup their R&D expenses by selling papers... On the other hand, open science benefits everyone. It makes public research that much more efficient and allows private actors to make the most out of it.

24. megaloblasto ◴[28 Aug 25 16:37 UTC] No.45054210{5}[source]▶
The math for the $20,000 is in my first post. $60 a paper times 365 days a year is $21,900 and I rounded down.

I don't have an example of a $60 paper (I don't keep a list) but below is a $42 paper and a $35 paper that I came across very recently.

https://library.seg.org/doi/epub/10.1190/geo2023-0525.1

https://www.dl.begellhouse.com/journals/52034eb04b657aea,442...

This is prohibitively expensive for the majority of the world.

Remember that the global average annual salary is around $18,000 (https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17512040).

These people cannot access science that is behind a paywall. The fact that they cannot is a failure. Whether its a moral failure, or an economic or a societal one, I'm not sure, but I do believe that providing free access to scientific advancements it the right thing to do.

25. immibis ◴[28 Aug 25 21:12 UTC] No.45057094{3}[source]▶
That's correct. The liberty to circumvent the pricing model and get the papers for free is not derived from the fact the pricing model is incorrect or unjust. Rather, it's derived from the fact the papers can be obtained for free. :)