[open-science] UK text mining exception: sci-hub

Fri Jul 8 16:34:02 UTC 2016

I blogged about this
https://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2016/05/06/sci-hub-and-legal-aspects-of-contentmining/
.

In short, there is a strong possibility that using Sci-HUB is illegal in
UK. Almost everyone presumes so and no one has given a formal legal opinion
as far as I know. Whether it would be breaking civil/contract law or
whether *criminal* law is also probably unknown. It's even possible that
someone in US could be convicred under CFAA. (They have been convicted for
scraping websites, for example).

If it IS illegal then it is also a *criminal* act to encourage others to
use it.

Since I am running a mining organisation, and am an advocate for reform in
EU, I have to obey the law as best as I understand it.

On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 5:21 PM, P Kishor <punk.kish at gmail.com> wrote:

> Let me give another analogy:
>
> I like drinking coffee and I can legally buy coffee from my local
> supermarket. But I am not allowed to buy “illegally” obtained coffee from
> the country across the border. My local supermarket makes it difficult for
> me to buy coffee so I figure out a way to get it from across the border. If
> doing so is illegal in my country then yes, I am committing a crime. I am
> not commenting on whether or not it is the right thing to do. I am just
> commenting whether or not it is illegal. If the law of your country thinks
> that sci-hub got the papers illegally then very likely you will be
> committing a crime getting papers from sci-hub.
>
>
> > On Jul 8, 2016, at 12:16 PM, Mike Taylor <mike at indexdata.com> wrote:
> >
> > I am not sure the question "Is Sci-Hub legal in your country?" makes
> > much sense. Sci-Hub isn't even IN my country.
> >
> > -- Mike.
> >
> >
> > On 8 July 2016 at 17:15, P Kishor <punk.kish at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Is sci-hub legal in your country? If yes, then it is legal for you get
> papers from sci-hub. If not, then it is not legal for you to get papers
> from sci-hub. You always break the laws of the country where you are
> located, and those who believe are harmed by your action have the recourse
> to sue you in your country because that is where you have broken the law.
> >>
> >>> On Jul 8, 2016, at 12:10 PM, Maximilian Haeussler <
> maximilianh at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> I have a naive question about copyright, sorry, and just out of
> curiosity:
> >>>
> >>> If a UK-based researcher is crawling papers but has trouble getting
> >>> them because of anti-bot techniques (e.g. Karger), is it legal for her
> >>> to crawl the papers from sci-hub instead?
> >>
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-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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