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

Fri Jul 8 16:41:09 UTC 2016

Ah, I had missed this blog post. Thanks!

On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 9:34 AM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> 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