What is Alexandra Elbakyan’s motivation for creating and running Sci-Hub? | Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week

" I've been a bit nonplussed recently to see some strange claims about Alexandra Elbakyan, the creator of Sci-Hub. For example, this from Angela Cochrane in an article at the Scholarly Kitchen: 'She sincerely believes that she is above the law.' I don’t think that’s the case at all. Nothing Elbakyan has said seems to communicate the kind of arrogance or exceptionalism that this implies. It’s more that she sees what she’s doing as obeying a higher law (whether correctly or incorrectly is, for the moment, beside the point). In other words, it’s not that she thinks she is anything special, but that what Sci-Hub is doing is special. And by 'a higher law' she doesn’t just mean an abstract sense of what is morally right, but very concretely article 27 of the UN declaration on human rights. And by the way, I notice that the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, article 15, is even more explicit ..."