Why blocking Sci-Hub and LibGen will actually hurt national interest

"Earlier this month, three foreign academic publishers sued two foreign websites for copyright infringement in a case before the Delhi High Court. Elsevier, Wiley, and American Chemical Society, among the world’s largest publishers of academic papers, wanted the court to block Sci-Hub and LibGen, the largest providers of ‘free downloads’ of their content in India. This case is important because it can have a significant impact on the broader research, academic and education environment in India.

First off, in a purely legal sense, the plaintiffs have a strong case: Sci-Hub and LibGen allow anyone around the world to freely download papers from scientific and academic journals, many of which are under various copyrights. The defendants are guilty in the same way as Robin Hood and his gang were guilty. Even this metaphor is not completely accurate, because unlike money, knowledge is non-zero-sum. Making it possible for an Indian student to gain knowledge does not take away anything from the scholars who published the paper. If anything, sharing knowledge helps increase it...."