Copyright Infrigement 2 : Electric Bogaloo

[Justaphysicsnerd]

Summary

A group of academics have joined a legal battle in India that has pitted those who believe in free access to knowledge against powerful corporations that control half of the world’s publishing business. The case being heard at the Delhi High Court could have international ramifications as the debate around open access to scholarly work has intensified in recent years. The court will deliberate on whether it’s legal for researchers and students to use the Sci-Hub and LibGen websites, the self-proclaimed digital “pirates” trying to disseminate scholarly literature to whoever wants it. 

 

Quotes

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Since 2019, global publishing giants Elsevier, Wiley and American Chemical Society have tried to block access to Sci-Hub and LibGen in India. A blanket ban on the Sci-Hub and LibGen (short for Library Genesis) websites, which are sitting on the world’s largest pirated depository of scientific articles and books, could negatively affect millions of students, lawyers say. Krishnesh Bapat, a lawyer who is part of the legal team of the Delhi-based NGO Internet Freedom Foundation, which is representing the academics, says Indian universities don’t have funds to pay the exorbitant subscription fees charged by Elsevier and other publishers.

 

Universities, especially those in developing countries, don’t have the funds to get subscriptions to expensive journals. Some estimates suggest universities spend between $500,000 and $10 million in annual subscription fees that go to publishing houses. Access to a single article can cost between $30 and $60.
 

In 2019, the University of California, which paid $10 million annually to Elsevier in subscription charges, dropped its services for the same reason. Elsevier owns 2,650 journals including The Lancet, Cell and the Journal of Molecular Biology. It reported revenue of more than $3.6 billion last year from its publishing business, most of it coming from digital subscriptions. The group also owns the copyrights to popular medical textbooks such as Gray’s Anatomy.  

Sci-Hub backers say publishing houses don’t pay for scientific research and experiments, which are mostly carried out in state-run universities. They only publish the articles, so there’s no reason for them to make so much money from academic journals. With Sci-Hub’s popularity growing worldwide (it’s used in every continent except for Antarctica) Elbakyan has been sued in the US by Elesiver and the American Chemical Society in copyright infringement cases.

Unlike the US, where Elbakyan didn’t bother to hire a lawyer, she is legally represented in India, adding to the importance of the case’s outcome.

 

The court has adjourned the matter until February but a ruling is expected sometime later next year. Elbakyan may have a better chance of winning the case in India. 

 

Bapat, of Internet Freedom, says India’s copyright law is more progressive than many developed countries. “By that I mean that there's a research exception provided under the copyright act. It means that if you are using copyright material for research then it would not constitute infringement.” He adds: “She has a stronger legal case in India.” 

While the latest stats on Sci-Hub users are not available, a 2016 Science magazine story said India was among the top three countries where Sci-Hub was being used to download articles. 

My thoughts

I think, we need to settle this quickly and personally I don't want either of the services to get banned. Heck, I even wonder why did scholars pay to publishers to publish their articles ? they get nothing besides citations if their journals/work has been used for something in another study. They could have done something similar themselves by hosting it on say Github or another website of their own. Also this would add to the copyright infringement laws that knowledge should be free and quoting text from scholastic journals should not be classified as copyright infringement. Honestly, I just want the judges to be sound minded and give decision in favor of Miss. Elbakyan, lets hope the best Indian Judges can be pretty random.

 

Also the articles cost a lot of money, for some context 1 USD  = 75 INR, so say you wanted to purchase access to a 30 USD article its 2655 INR (18% taxes called GST) and that's a lot of money in a developing country like India where the per capita income is just around 95000 INR so you really think a person will be able to afford access to the article ? and before you guys ask, lots of colleges for higher education are government run hence the fees is subsidized in some form.

 

Sources

 Indian academics throw weight behind Sci-Hub and LibGen in landmark case (trtworld.com)

[whm1974]

if the Scholarly and Scientific works are publicly funded, then the published Articles should either free or available for very reasonable fees.

 

 

 

   

[tikker]

22 hours ago, whm1974 said:

if the Scholarly and Scientific works are publicly funded, then the published Articles should either free or available for very reasonable fees.  

Most research is "publicly funded" by tax money. In the spirit of free access a lot of research gets put on preprint services like arXiv, medRxiv or bioRxiv. This typically also satisfies any mandatory open access checkboxes. Publishing under Open Access is getting more popular nowadays and sometimes required, but will cost you more (you need to pay the journal to publish with them).

On 11/28/2021 at 3:57 PM, Justaphysicsnerd said:

I think, we need to settle this quickly and personally I don't want either of the services to get banned. Heck, I even wonder why did scholars pay to publishers to publish their articles ?

Because they (used to) do a lot of the editorial work for you. They spell check and language-edit your manuscript, generally keep some sort of standard when it comes to figure quality in terms of DPI, readability etc., provide a standard format and, most importantly, have the peer-review part. Over time they have now also built a name. You know that if something is accepted in one of those journals that it's sound research.

On 11/28/2021 at 3:57 PM, Justaphysicsnerd said:

they get nothing besides citations if their journals/work has been used for something in another study. They could have done something similar themselves by hosting it on say Github or another website of their own.

This is basically arXiv and its equivalents. The problem is that you can put anything you want online. I could write a paper proving pi is equal to 3 and put it up right now. That doesn't make it correct. That is where the peer-review system comes it. You'll have at least one, generally three or so in my field, peers looking at your manuscript. They check whether your analysis is sound, whether the conclusions you draw make sense and if it is overall clear enough to be understood. For better or for worse, publishing makes your work "official" and "approved".

On 11/28/2021 at 3:57 PM, Justaphysicsnerd said:

Also this would add to the copyright infringement laws that knowledge should be free and quoting text from scholastic journals should not be classified as copyright infringement. Honestly, I just want the judges to be sound minded and give decision in favor of Miss. Elbakyan, lets hope the best Indian Judges can be pretty random.

To my knowledge copyright law doesn't state that knowledge should be free. Not in terms of price at least. Research is already free in the sense that it is perfectly fine for you to take that knowledge and build upon it. Nobody will stop you if you follow up on a new scientific discovery and find other things related to that.

 

Quoting academic material also isn't copyright infrigement. It's plagiarism if you don't quote the source, but otherwise it's fine. Figures etc. you naturally have to ask permission for to reproduce commercially, because well, they are protected by copyright law. For the same reason you cannot take a random picture from the internet and try to publish it in a journal.

 

The reason why journals charge is simply because they are a commercial for-profit entity and need/want to make money just like any other business. Plenty of scientists are advocating we need a different system, which is how SciHub and likes came to be. One of the sore points of publishing with journals is that in the not-open access case you have to transfer copyright to them and in the open access case it's (much) more expensive. The kind of half-assed solution is that journals are kind enough to allow you to put your paper on an approved pre-print service like arXiv.

 

Money has to come from somewhere, but I think the charges could be lower. Even being associated to a university only provides you access to what the university/institute deems most applicable, useful or popular, because the subscriptions are expensive.

[dalekphalm]

On 11/28/2021 at 9:57 AM, Justaphysicsnerd said:

Sci-Hub and LibGen websites

Are these sites peer reviewed before a paper can be published?

[tikker]

19 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Are these sites peer reviewed before a paper can be published?

They are the high seas of scientific literature. That's the problem They don't publish, they just collect papers from the usual publishers who put them behind paywalls.

[dalekphalm]

41 minutes ago, tikker said:

They are the high seas of scientific literature. That's the problem They don't publish, they just collect papers from the usual publishers who put them behind paywalls.

And that right there is the problem with these services, then.

 

Without peer review, the scientific system starts to break down. Peer reviewing isn't free (not unless a scientist wants to volunteer their time doing so for free anyway).

 

I agree that peer reviewed scientific papers should be easily accessible - but someone has to pay for it, otherwise it loses it's value. So if the end user isn't going to pay, a new system (besides just pirating the papers) should be created.

 

Maybe a global fund, funded by governments, industry companies, Union/Professional Organization fees, etc?

[whm1974]

5 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

And that right there is the problem with these services, then.

 

Without peer review, the scientific system starts to break down. Peer reviewing isn't free (not unless a scientist wants to volunteer their time doing so for free anyway).

 

I agree that peer reviewed scientific papers should be easily accessible - but someone has to pay for it, otherwise it loses it's value. So if the end user isn't going to pay, a new system (besides just pirating the papers) should be created.

 

Maybe a global fund, funded by governments, industry companies, Union/Professional Organization fees, etc?

Well We could fund a nonprofit group of Scientists to do the proper Peer Review of Scientific Papers submitted to the Journal.

[dalekphalm]

1 minute ago, whm1974 said:

Well We could fund a nonprofit group of Scientists to do the proper Peer Review of Scientific Papers submitted to the Journal.

Totally - but someone has to pay for it. Where does the funding come from? Which journal? A newly created one or an existing one?

 

Certainly changes and improvements can be made.

[whm1974]

35 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Totally - but someone has to pay for it. Where does the funding come from? Which journal? A newly created one or an existing one?

 

Certainly changes and improvements can be made.

Governments could this along with some private funding. Of course with Public Funding there comes the Political Interference with Science Research as well.

 

Stuff like Evolution, and those who strongly believe that the Earth is flat.  

[tikker]

9 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Without peer review, the scientific system starts to break down. Peer reviewing isn't free (not unless a scientist wants to volunteer their time doing so for free anyway).

 Unfortunately that is the case. Peer review is (as far as I've heard from colleagues) something you're at some point just sort of expected to do so or tick a box you're willing to peer-review, and you are not compensated for it in either case to my knowledge.

9 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Totally - but someone has to pay for it. Where does the funding come from? Which journal? A newly created one or an existing one?

 

Certainly changes and improvements can be made.

The saddest thing is none of the money that gets paid to journals makes it to the scientists or their group AFAIK.

[dalekphalm]

5 hours ago, tikker said:

 Unfortunately that is the case. Peer review is (as far as I've heard from colleagues) something you're at some point just sort of expected to do so or tick a box you're willing to peer-review, and you are not compensated for it in either case to my knowledge.

The saddest thing is none of the money that gets paid to journals makes it to the scientists or their group AFAIK.

That's very unfortunate - Scientists who do peer reviewing should be compensated for it (even if it's just a token payment).