Any research funded by any public money (in whole or in part, or done for free on devices funded by public money) should be public. Not scihub pirate-public, but available for download directly, for free on the university/institution webpage, and through national libraries.
> The City of London's Intellectual Property Crime Unit says the Sci-Hub website could "pose a threat to their personal information and data".<p>> The police are concerned that users of the "Russia-based website" could have information taken and misused online.<p>Police (and politicians in general) should be careful about the fire they're playing with. There are some valid reasons to be concerned about hacking based out of Russia, but if every time they want to try to cast aspersions on things they don't like by highlighting connections to Russian they run he risk of people just totally discounting that warning in all cases.
Here's the full press release from the Police force:<p><a href="https://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/news/city-of-london/news/2021/march/police-warn-students-and-universities-of-accessing-an-illegal-website-to-download-published-scientific-papers/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/news/city-of-london/news/...</a><p>> Sci-Hub is a series of websites that enable free access to over 70 million published scientific papers of all disciplines. It is estimated that it includes 80% or more of the world’s currently published scientific papers, with the volume of data being roughly two and a half times the size of Wikipedia.<p>Fantastic!<p>> Sci-Hub obtains the papers through a variety of malicious means, such as the use of phishing emails to trick university staff and students into divulging their login credentials. Sci Hub then use this to compromise the university’s network and download the research papers.<p>A) Is this true?<p>B) If so, is it a bad thing?
The BBC is notorious for its poor reporting of tech matters and yet again they've failed to write a balanced, informed article. Is there even any substance to these allegations of phishing and risk to data?
Quite the FUD parade about Sci-Hub. But if you can’t get access to it, there are other ways to get your hands on research papers:<p><a href="https://lee-phillips.org/articleAccess/" rel="nofollow">https://lee-phillips.org/articleAccess/</a>
This is one of the best examples for why "don't editorialize titles" doesn't always work. People here know SciHub and the title is devoid of useful information (basically "UK police warns about website").
A couple of points: There isn't a single police force that operates across England. For London there are the Metropolitan Police who cover actual London, and the City of London Police who cover the "square mile", the tiny City of London area.<p>Compare<p><a href="https://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/police-forces/city-of-london-police/areas/city-of-london/about-us/about-us/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/police-forces/city-of-lon...</a><p><a href="https://www.met.police.uk/police-forces/metropolitan-police/areas/about-us/about-the-met/" rel="nofollow">https://www.met.police.uk/police-forces/metropolitan-police/...</a><p>And it's weird that the police are advising people not to use Sci-Hub. In England copyright violation is a civil matter, not a criminal offence, unless you're doing it as part of business or you're doing so much of it you're distorting trade. It's simply not a police matter.
Isn't it about time that Sci-Hub -or something like it- got legalized?<p>It seems clear that Sci-Hub is a great boon to the promotion of the arts and sciences.<p>It wouldn't even be unprecedented to have laws that "encourage" contributions. Think of the old library of Alexandria, or even the modern library of Congress.
This article is giving me a major case of Gell-Mann Amnesia.<p>The writing follows no thread, the article contains no more information than interleaving parts of two press releases would give you, it's a complete mess. This would not pass for a decent writing assignment at the high-school level — and yet it's published by the BBC somehow. Even the subheadings are weirdly chosen.<p>Was this even touched by a human?
Oh that's clever, looks like the UK government's Nudge Committee has been busy, again!<p>Until we actually understand what's being done to us, we're all just blowing in the wind.
<i>"If you're tricked into revealing your log-in credentials, whether it's through the use of fake emails or malware, we know that Sci-Hub will then use those details to compromise your university's computer network in order to steal research papers," [Max Bruce, the City of London Police's cyber protection officer] said.</i><p>That's the first I've heard about this, and it would represent a very different perspective on Sci-Hub to the traditional anti-copyright Robin Hood styling.<p>That said, even though CoLP is a rather strange police force within system here, it would be surprising for it to make a definitive public statement like that without being reasonably confident that it was correct. Is there any truth to that allegation?
Woah, this is a big deal. On a weekly basis I find myself trying to dig deep into research and data on a health abnormality that I'm experiencing and often am greeted by a paywall. It's just not practical for me to pay for access to each article when 95% of them don't end up including the specific information I'm looking for anyways.<p>I think I remember the Indian government proposing something similar to this current sci-hub initiative.<p>Obviously I don't know if sci-hub is the right way to go about these things, and I wonder how this would change the incentivization behind research. From my understanding though the main gatekeepers here like elsevier act as more of a financial leech on the system rather than providing any real value; since they aren't the ones funding the research to begin with. Would be interested to hear other's take on this.