Sci-Hub: research piracy and the public good | Times Higher Education (THE)

"It looks like the scholarly publishing community has been hit by its own version of Napster. Over the past year, some 47 million research articles have been made freely available through a site called Sci-Hub. The publishing giant Elsevier, aghast at finding many of its articles being given away, wasted little time in suing the site in federal court for irreparable damages and copyright infringement “of up to $150,000 (£105,000) per infringed work.” Last autumn, the court granted a preliminary injunction against the site that succeeded in shutting it down. Since then multiple versions of Sci-Hub have sprung up on the darknet, largely beyond the reach of the law. The next hearing in the case is scheduled for 17 March. What is thoroughly Napster about this case is how it concerns an ageing industry trying to maintain a terribly profitable – but outdated – business model. Such was the music industry when Napster sounded the wake-up call. What is decidedly not Napster about this case is that the circulation of research is at issue, and not the music of Metallica. Alexandra Elbakyan, the researcher from Kazakhstan who started Sci-Hub, makes this very point about Napster and the need for change. Musicians receive royalties for music sold; researchers need access to each others’ work, for which they largely do not receive royalties ..."