April 2024 – Page 152 – news.buyenne.com

Sci-Hub There are thousands of pirate sites on the Internet but only a few will receive a permanent entry in the history books. Sci-Hub will certainly be among them.

Founded by Kazakhstani computer programmer Alexandria Elbakyan, Sci-Hub provides free access to millions of academic publications. As such, it’s an essential tool for less privileged students and researchers worldwide.

There is no denying that Sci-Hub facilitates access to otherwise paywalled research, which is often partly funded by public money. At the same time, however, it’s a threat to major publishers who rely on those same paywalls to generate revenue and subsequent profits.

The publishers have the law on their side. Previously, Sci-Hub and Elbakyan were sued in U.S. federal court, which resulted in multi-million dollar judgments. That did little to stop the site from operating, however, so rightsholders had to resort to other, less direct means.

Sci-Hub Blockades

When direct lawsuits are unable to provide the desired results, going after third-party intermediaries is often the next step. This includes site blocking measures, where ISPs are required to block their subscribers’ access to pirate sites.

Russia was one of the first countries to order a Sci-Hub blockade in 2018 but it certainly didn’t stop there. In recent years, similar measures have followed in France, Denmark, Austria, the UK and, most recently, The Netherlands.

Despite the U.S. court orders, the site has yet to be blocked there, as site blocking isn’t a viable option due to the lack of no-fault injunctions. However, the U.S. Trade Representative recently branded the shadow library a “notorious market“.

Germany Blocks Sci-Hub

Thus far, the Sci-Hub blockades have been mostly centered around Europe and Germany continues this trend. As part of a voluntary agreement between rightsholders and ISPs, the “Clearing Body for Copyright on the Internet” (CUII) regularly issues new blocking orders and Sci-Hub is the latest target.

The process doesn’t involve any judicial oversight but CUII relies on a thorough review process to check if a blocking request is warranted. The previous orders have all centered around film and music pirate sites but the latest comes at the request of a publisher.

CUII’s order is heavily redacted and doesn’t mention the applicant by name, only that it’s a member of the “International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers” (STM). What’s clear, however, is that Sci-Hub is seen as a structurally infringing website and that blocking measures are warranted.

“The request for a recommendation to block the SCI-HUB website is justified. The website is a structural copyright infringing website (SUW). There is a clear infringement of copyright. The blocking is reasonable and proportionate,” CUII’s order reads.

Other Options Exhausted

Before a site can be blocked, rightsholders have to pursue other options to take the site offline. The publisher did so by hiring a private investigator to contact the site directly and track down various intermediaries, including the domain registrars, but without the desired result.

“The private investigator identified ***** in ***** and ***** in ***** as registrars. The requests for information to the registrars under the identified email addresses were not answered in terms of content,” CUII writes.

To confirm that Sci-Hub is mostly dedicated to sharing copyright-infringing material the publisher cited several claims from the website itself, as shown below.

From the order (translated)
cuii order

In addition, the publisher investigated a random sample of content from Sci-Hub to conclude that between 92.15% and 95.56% is copyright infringing. That’s sufficient to characterize the shadow library as a structurally infringing website and have it blocked.

The final CUII order only mentions the sci-hub.st domain by name, but the redacted paperwork suggests that four other domains have to be blocked by German Internet providers.

The German news site Tarnkappe, which covered the recent order, informs TorrentFreak that, in addition to sci-hub-st, sci-hub.ru and sci-hub.se are also blocked by T-Mobile. This likely applies to other ISPs too.

While this new blockade will make it harder for Germans to access Sci-Hub, those who are determined to bypass paywalls generally find a way. The shadow library currently gets most of its traffic from China, India and the United States; where the site isn’t blocked, yet.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.