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

Sat Jul 9 12:56:56 UTC 2016

Oh man, yeah definitely you are breaking the law. Copyright is very strongly jurisdictional. Which is why streaming services are controlled by where you are located, and they, the service providers, try to determine where you are located using geoip. Subverting that by using a VPN service could also be problematic, and at least Netflix thinks it is problematic enough that it is not implementing technology to even detecting when you are using a VPN so it can stop the stream.

See, there are two things at play here:

1. Obtaining something illegally is obtaining it illegally even if you have the right to obtain it. Would you have done something illegal if instead of downloading the episode from a torrent, you had tapped into your neighbor’s home network and grabbed the legally recorded episode from his DVR. Oh you bet yes. And, if your neighbor had illegally recorded it (analogous to a torrent), then your neighbor would be in the can as well.

2. There is no such thing as international copyright although the Creative Commons licenses do come close to providing an "international copyright license” because of the various copyright treaties. Cross-border application of copyright happens because countries are party to various international treaties that harmonize the differences in laws (see http://punkish.org/copyright/).

A final illustration: You live in Brazil where there is copyright law. You write a book (or make a movie, whatever your passion) and put it online subject to a copyright license. I live in the country of Nocopyrightistan where, as it says on the tin, there is no copyright, and Nocopyrightistan has also not signed any treaty that Brazil has also signed. I download your creation. I have not broken any law in my country, and there is really not much you can do. You certainly can’t sue me in Nocopyrightistan because I have not broken any law. Now, what I don’t know is if I can be arrested/sued if I visit Brazil. I certainly haven’t broken any law in Brazil because when I downloaded your stuff, I was in Nocopyrightistan. But maybe there is some clause that allows for my arrest. Or, maybe you are a powerful publisher who can get the courts to move against me. We will need a real lawyer to answer this part.

> On Jul 9, 2016, at 8:27 AM, Jackson da Silva Medeiros <jackson.medeiros at ufrgs.br> wrote:
> 
> Let me put my 50 cents problematization: So, if I have cable TV, and I pay for that, and I like to watch Simpsons at night... But, I got a dinner with friends and, DAMN IT!, I lost the best Simpsons episode ever... If I get home and download the episode from a torrent, am I a lawbreaker?
> 
>  
> Just curiosity by analogy.
> 
> ---
> Jackson da Silva Medeiros
> UFRGS/FABICO/DCI
> Em 08/07/2016 13:46, P Kishor escreveu:
> 
>> yeah, just because you have the right to get something via legal means doesn’t mean you also have the right to get it via illegal means just because your legal source ist kaput temporarily.
>>> On Jul 8, 2016, at 12:20 PM, Maximilian Haeussler <maximilianh at gmail.com> wrote: The hypothetical situation I describe is: UK-based researcher, has fulltext access, cannot get fulltext due to technical circumstances that make crawling hard. So, I understand from your reply that the copyright exception applies only if you get the papers through legal means. Makes sense. It doesn't apply to me, I just asked out of curiosity. Thanks! Max On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 9:15 AM, 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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