Pirates and publishers both battle COVID-19 - CGTN

Internet pirates have taken the law into their own hands, leaking over 5,000 pay-walled papers on coronavirus, of which COVID-19 is one, on to Reddit. The user, 'Shrine,' who posted the articles on the 'Open_Science' subReddit page, wrote "I found an early-release coronavirus article with a $35.95 access fee for non-subscribers. The fury I felt brought tears to my eyes," the post read. The pirates, described by 'Shrine' as "me and a few friends," trawled through Sci-Hub, a site that provides research papers without regard to copyright, searching for coronavirus related content in titles or abstracts of papers from 1968-2020. Subsequently releasing some 5,352 on the online archiving site the-eye, linked to on Reddit post.