A pirating service for academic journal articles could bring down the whole establishment — Quartz

"'For the first time, the overwhelming majority of scholarly literature is available gratis to anyone with an Internet connection,' he writes.

That’s as it should be, advocates of open research say. They argue, among other things, that a substantial portion of the research that publishers attempt to lock behind paywalls was funded with grants paid for by taxpayers, and that the public should therefore have unfettered access to it.

Meanwhile, the publishers aren’t going down without a fight. The publisher Elsevier sued Sci-Hub, claiming copyright infringement, in 2011—and a New York district court ruled last month that Elsevier is owed $15 million in damages."