From: "Jean-Claude Guédon" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2017 09:59:29 -0400

JIm's argument is correct, but it misses one further hypothesis: what
if Sci-hub's subtext were actually to destroy the present ecosystem of
scholarly publishing? Which is a good long step beyond harassment,
raiding, and disruption.

One point we should probably keep in mind is that Sci-Hub could not
work with the input of just one person. Who are the other people
involved? Who finances them? All this out of Russia, or former Soviet
republics?  Hmmmmm...

Nice stuff for a good spy novel, anyway. Any taker?

Jean-Claude Guédon


From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2017 20:02:22 -0700

I had not thought of Sandy's very good point.  Sci-Hub as we know it,
and on their own representation, *depends* on the existing publishing
system to produce, aggregate, and make available all of their content
-- which they then, um, transfer into their servers.  Success for them
ideally consists in continued parasitism.  One form of failure would
be effective destruction of their server by some form of force
majeure, which many think unlikely.  But another form of failure would
lie in the collapse of the ecosystem on which they feed.  Without
Elsevier, Wiley, and Springer, in other words, they are nothing.
Nothing suggests that they have a strategy beyond harassment, raiding,
disruption.  Would anyone care to do the work of strategy for them
here on Liblicense?

Jim O'Donnell
ASU