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1/12 So something not-fantastic happened yesterday.
I received an email from a lawyer at @twobirds, @moniquewadsted, on behalf of @ElsevierConnect regarding my blog post about where to download research papers and scientific articles for free.https://citationsy.com/blog/download-research-papers-scientific-articles-free-scihub/ …
2/12 The blog post contains a link to Sci-Hub. They think that “posting hyperlinks” to work that they believe is protected by copyright is a “communication to the public” and thus illegal. Is this true? I don’t know. It doesn’t smell true to me.
3/12 You can also easily do a Google search for “Sci-Hub” and find the site, so is Google not also linking to Sci-Hub? Wikipedia also links to Sci-Hub (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub ). Is this not the same thing, @twobirds?
4/12 Wether they are right or not is pretty much a moot point though, since @ElsevierConnect has many more lawyers than I do (0) and could crush me at any moment if they wanted to.
5/12 They haven’t been able to get Sci-Hub shut down so they’re trying to stop anyone from linking to them, which is ridiculous.
6/12 Why you trying to stop students, researchers, and academics from reading papers, @ElsevierConnect? Is it that you think only students at universities that can afford an Elsevier subscription should have access to knowledge?
7/12 The University of California recently dropped their Elsevier subscription, which was costing them 10 Million USD / year. (source: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/3/1/18245235/university-of-california-elsevier-subscription-open-access …). Yep, TEN MILLION DOLLARS, none of which goes to the paper’s authors.
8/12 So why is @ElsevierConnect sending their pack of highly paid lawyers, @twobirds, to attack me? Is it because they love science so much? Is this “Empowering Knowledge™“, @ElsevierConnect?
9/12 BTW, @ElsevierConnect owns one of Citationsy’s competitors, the very mediocre @mendeley_com. Does this have anything to do with their attack on me? They know they could bankrupt me without breaking a sweat. Is that a good thing?
10/12 I have of course taken down any links to Sci-Hub on http://Citationsy.com . @ElsevierLabs obviously thinks making money is more important than furthering science. Congratulations, @twobirds! We all now that the only thing this will achieve is less people reading papers.
11/12 @ElsevierLabs You could have just asked me nicely, you didn't have to hire a world-famous lawyer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monique_Wadsted …) to hunt me down over one link
12/12 You can still use Citationsy Archives to search for papers and download them from Open Access repositories, there just won’t be a link to Sci-Hub anymore.
And Citationsy (https://citationsy.com/ ) remains perhaps the world’s best reference management tool.
Update 1: @BoingBoing wrote about what happened:https://boingboing.net/2019/08/02/publicsphere-v-elsevier.html …
Update 2: @martin_eve found out that Elsevier themselves link to Sci-Hub a bunch of times in the papers they publish:https://eve.gd/2019/08/03/elsevier-threatens-others-for-linking-to-sci-hub-but-does-it-itself/ …
Update 3: Which BoingBoing also covered:https://boingboing.net/2019/08/03/zero-value-added.html …
Update 4: The Chinese news website http://Sina.com is also covering our case:http://tech.sina.com.cn/csj/2019-08-05/doc-ihytcerm8654691.shtml …
Update 5: More coverage, this time from the Japanese website http://Gigazine.net https://gigazine.net/news/20190806-elsevier-link-sci-hub/ …pic.twitter.com/50rHZ9cDGZ
Update 6: Today is the deadline that @ElsevierConnect gave me via their lawyers (@Moniquewadsted of @twobirds) to remove all links to Sci-Hub. I have done so, and have been waiting for confirmation from them since August 2nd. This the last email I sent them:pic.twitter.com/EvVxaU4ERa
Citationsy is in full compliance with their cease and desist. I removed all links from the blog post. Citationsy Archives used to link to a third-party site that redirected to Sci-Hub — Those links are now also removed. Citationsy Archives never linked directly to Sci-Hub.
Tomorrow I will post the cease and desist letter as well as the emails we exchanged.
Update 7: http://Techdirt.com is also covering the case:https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190804/21235242719/elsevier-says-infringing-to-link-to-sci-hub-hypocrite-elsevier-links-to-sci-hub-all-time.shtml …
Update 8: Elsevier’s lawyers emailed me to say that they are confirming that I have complied with their cease and desist and am no longer linking to Sci-Hub. Looks like this is over now.
Update 9: @TorrentFreak just posted an extensive, well-researched article on Sci-Hub, Elsevier, and Citationsy:https://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-efforts-are-unlikely-to-beat-sci-hub/ …
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