Noble robbers do not give up
Elsevier wins court case against Sci-Hub and LibGen
Julia Korowski, XX2 century
Elsevier – one of the largest publishers of scientific journals – won the court against Sci-Hub and LibGen. This was reported by Nature News on Thursday, June 22. The judge ordered the owners of the sites to pay Elsevier compensation in the amount of $ 15 million.
Sci-Hub is a service for free download of scientific articles, including those that are in the public domain. It gives access to the works of scientists almost instantly: there is no need to wait until one of the academicians puts the preprint in the public domain or uploads a copy of the article to the repository, just enter the address in the search bar and get the result immediately. For many – including scientists and students, to whom universities do not provide a paid subscription – this is the only source of scientific papers. Despite attempts to organize a legal service to search for articles, it is still pirated Sci-Hub remains the most effective way to get to knowledge.
A map of article downloads via Sci-Hub in 2015 was published in Science in the article "Who downloads pirated articles? EVERYTHING." The data that formed the basis of the map can be downloaded from the Dryad repository.
Sci-Hub was founded by neuroscientist Alexandra Elbakyan, its servers are located in St. Petersburg. Library Genesis is also based in Russia – thousands of monographs, popular science and documentary books are stored on the site. Elsevier sued Sci-Hub and LibGen in 2015, and the Dutch publishing house chose the American judicial system to deal with Russian pirates. And the United States did not disappoint: in the same year, Judge Robert Sweet issued a temporary injunction, and the domain name "sci-hub.org " blocked. In response, Sci-Hub changed the address and continued working.
In May, Elsevier provided the court with a list of 100 articles that Sci-Hub and LibGen allowed to download illegally. It is worth noting that Elsevier really got the most from the pirates: of the 28 million articles uploaded using Sci-Hub in 2016, the vast majority were published in the journals of this publishing house (Springer Nature and Wiley-Blackwell occupy the second and third places). June 21 judge of the U.S. District Court in New York has made a final decision in favor of Elsevier. Neither Elbakyan nor her legal representatives were present at the meeting.
"The court did not make a mistake by mistaking illegal activity for an action for the benefit of society," Maria Pallante, president of the US Publishers Association, responded to the decision. "On the contrary, he recognized the actions of the accused as a monstrous and blatant violation, which they really are, and confirmed that copyright law plays a crucial role in promoting scientific research and the interests of society." However, the outcome of the case is unlikely to affect the activities of the pirates, since both the servers and the owners of the sites are outside the jurisdiction of the United States. We have asked Alexandra Elbakyan to comment on the court's decision. Here are her words:
"In a sense, the decision of the American court even pleased me, as it highlights the insanity that is happening in the West: the operation of a website whose only fault is the distribution of scientific articles is being banned in court. Why should we develop nuclear bombs and other types of weapons when all we need is just to allow people to read scientific articles for free? According to Elzevir's lawyers, with whom the American court agreed, this is enough to "cause and continue to cause irreparable damage to Elzevir, his clients and the public." That is, just by reading scientific articles on the Sci-Hub website, you cause irreparable damage to Elsevier and American citizens.
It can be concluded that if even more people start reading scientific literature through the Sci-Hub, the damage will become so irreparable that the United States will collapse. So we will win!"
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26.06.2017