From: "Pilch, Janice T" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2017 03:15:37 +0000 Kevin, You seem to be trying to convince the audience that use of Sci-Hub follows general rules of economics, such that a higher-priced item will be less attractive to consumers than a lower-priced or zero-priced item, and that when the price gets too high, the company runs into problems. You refer to a saying of economist Katheryn Price, to the effect that the moment a company makes a mistake in pricing, they either damage their profits or their reputation. In this framing, losses to Elsevier are justified by so-called economic laws, and Sci-Hub is legitimized by gaining a place within the laws of economics. The blame falls on Elsevier for pricing its product out of range, following some kind of economic law. You obscure two real issues: One, that Sci-Hub doesn’t even deserve a place in an economic analysis. Sci-Hub doesn’t follow the normal laws of economics. Elsevier is getting ripped off by a criminal element that falls outside normal economic theories of pricing. As for Elsevier being “to blame” for having their material stolen for being over-priced, may I mention that everything today is being stolen that can be stolen for digital industry gain, no matter how much it costs and even if it doesn’t have a price tag. It's not about the cost. And two, that this is not a consumer issue, this is about strategies being used by digital corporations and their followers to boost their gains. You refer to the perceived wisdom of “our faculty members are way ahead of us librarians in pursuing new avenues for scholarly communications.” But faculty members experience zero cost in the first place. They never experience the cost of Elsevier articles. They have no idea what libraries pay for Elsevier products. This is not a situation where consumers are voting with their wallets not to pay a price they see as too high. It’s about a whole different aspect of competition, involving theft and misappropriation to increase profits of competing digital industries. This message, like the previous message, blames Elsevier for the problem. I notice that supporters of digital capitalism have developed a method of accusing anyone who tries to assert their rights as having created their own problem- something that defies reality, given the fact that it’s the digital industries and their followers creating the problems pretty much in every case- in this case, problems that affect a publisher. Elsevier didn’t make SciHub what it is, but now they have to deal with it. In the cosmology of digital industry capitalists, everyone else creates their own problems just by being there and not being them. Early American capitalists shared this view, based on a belief system holding that the wealthy deserved their wealth and were doing divine work, while the less fortunate had to have been guilty of some kind of egregious sin, and deserved their fate and problems. Such myth allowed the capitalists to escape guilt over their own dishonest and egregious behavior. It continues today in the minds of those who think that people who object to being stolen from- having their profits siphoned, their ability to make a living crushed, having their personal data taken, having their privacy stolen- deserve scorn. Little Alexandra Elbakyan, whose actions feed nicely into the ambitions of BigTech (we read that they still desperately need content), laughs about it, as the article says, describing Elsevier’s requests as “funny” and “ridiculous.” The truth is not that Elsevier made Sci-Hub what it is. The piracy is egregious and staggering and nothing justifies it, including a misapplied economic theory. In the faulty cosmology of digital evangelism, bullies and criminals are heroes, victims are guilty parties, and the public- and the library community- is not supposed to know the difference. They are just supposed to cheerlead online, generating even more money. Truth is important. We should try harder to get back to it. Best, Janice Janice T. Pilch Rutgers University Libraries ________________________________________ From: "Smith, Kevin L" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2017 12:58:54 +0000 Anthony, There is a saying, that I have seen attributed to economist Katheryn Price, to the effect that the moment a company makes a mistake in pricing, they either damage their profits or their reputation. I think Elsevier has made that mistake wildly in the direction of overpricing and therefore have seriously damaged their reputation. Indeed, they seem to make quite a number of public relations missteps, which was the point of my original comment. So it is possible that researchers who elect to use Sci-Hub even when Elsevier is available to them are voting with their feet. They may still submit to Elsevier journals in spite of their distaste -- which is very easy to detect in any conversation with scholarly authors -- because of perceived P&T pressures, but prefer to use some other source for their own research. The other possible reason that occurs to me is convenience. Since I have never tried to find an article using Sci-Hub, I cannot assess the merits of that as a possible reason, but those two explanations are both possible, and not mutually exclusive. Your second and third paragraph together seem to suggest that librarians and others responsible for subscriptions are over-estimating the importance of Elsevier, don't they? If lots of researchers have subscription-based access to Elsevier, but many of those same researchers are opting to use Sci-Hub instead, maybe we need to reconsider our cherished belief that we cannot cancel Elsevier subscriptions without bring down the wrath of researchers on our heads. It is possible that our faculty members are way ahead of us librarians in pursuing new avenues for scholarly communications. I am sorry you find my comments so predictable; I suppose I can only wish that they required as little study or thought as you seem to believe. Kevin Kevin L. Smith, J.D. Dean of Libraries University of Kansas -----Original Message----- From: Anthony Watkinson <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wed, 31 May 2017 10:37:28 +0100 I was waiting for Kevin to say something like this. He would be failing in his duty if he did not do so. The interesting thing about SciHub is that someone has shown that many of the users have access to the articles they go to SciHib for. Why is this? I would be interested in his views. I would guess that more researchers have access to Elsevier toll access articles than to the articles of any other publisher who uses the subscription model. They certainly have more big deals and more penetration that way than any other publisher. Anthony -----Original Message----- From: "Smith, Kevin L" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Tue, 30 May 2017 13:04:33 +0000 It is a rather curious article, beginning with the very intimidating language quoted, but going on to note that the founder of Sci-Hub expects to continue to defy the U.S. court. There is probably very little that Elsevier can do to enforce a judgment it obtains, so any award is likely to have only symbolic value. Even the symbolism seems likely to have only limited impact, since the grandiose language of righteous indignation in Elsevier's motion is so common to them. They say things like "staggering" and "egregious" in every press release they issue about alleged infringement and even about public access proposals. They cry wolf so often, in short, that even when that language might be justified it is just too easy to dismiss. And, of course, there is the point made at the end of the article that Elsevier has likely brought more attention to Sci-Hub than would have been possible if they had simply ignored it. I am sure the decision-makers at Elsevier thought this would be their "Napster moment," but the truth is that they pretty much made Sci-Hub what it is, and now they are finding that they cannot put the genie back in the bottle. Kevin L. Smith, J.D. Dean of Libraries University of Kansas