The article states that the judgement is regarding copyright infringement on 100 articles and the damages awarded are $15 million.<p>It also notes that 28 million articles have been downloaded, so perhaps the true damages according to law, if all downloads were considered, should be 28e6*15e6/100 = $4.2 trillion.<p>I wonder, how many of the 100 articles, or the 28 million for that matter, were written by staff at Elsevier? Well the number is zero articles of course. Then we might ask, how many of the 100 articles or the 28 million articles were written by anyone for whom Elsevier financially compensated? Again the number is zero articles of course. Yet Elsevier, who neither wrote nor paid for any of these articles they claim copyright to, is entitled to $4.2 trillion in damages.<p>We might also ask, how many of the 28 million articles downloaded were done so by people who if they had not found it on scihub would have paid the $28 or $39 or $179 1 day or 3 day or 7 day "access pass" to read the single article? Perhaps it is a few. Perhaps before scihub there were up to dozens of people a month buying these access passes, across the many millions of articles Elsevier claims to own despite them never having authored them nor having financially compensated the authors.<p>Who are the real thieving parasitical self-serving pirates here? Is it Elbakyan? Or is it Elsevier?<p>Who is the scientist fighting for academic freedom and working to spread knowledge here? Is it Elbakyan? Or is it Elsevier?