Yatendra
The
good thing about fire and knowledge is that they can’t be kept private, their
true nature is to expand endlessly. That is how they survive.
According to Greek mythology,
Prometheus, a titan known for his trickery, stole fire from the workshop of Hephaistos
and Athena and gave it to humans. This led him to
become a victim of Zeus’ rage. However, for humans his fire became an
indispensable gift, necessary for their survival. It gave humans the power to
be free from gods’ mercy.
As ‘The Internet’s Own Boy’1,
Aaron Swartz writes in his Guerilla Open Access Manifesto2
“Information is power. But like all
power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world's entire
scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and
journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private
corporations.”
The good thing about fire and knowledge
is that they can’t be kept private, their true nature is to expand endlessly.
That is how they survive.
The device on which you are reading
this, is also a product of centuries of sharing of knowledge and effort of
hundreds of thousands of scientists and engineers. The utility of that same
device proves that the true nature of science is being sharable.
All
Knowledge must be Free and Accessible
What about intellectual property and
copyright?
Can knowledge be owned like property?
The
concept of intellectual property is rarely examined critically. That is,
“Whether knowledge can be someone’s property?” is rarely discussed.
Private
property in material wealth begins by fencing off what is a gift of nature, and
then enforcing the right to property by legal and extra legal means. The right
to private property then becomes power over others, over the propertyless. The
communist ideal challenges private property by demanding that all wealth should
be shared by the entire humanity.
Property
in knowledge attempts to create exclusionary control over what is essentially a
result of the accumulated intellectual labour of the entire humanity. Should
all humans have equal access to the shared knowledge of humanity, or some
should have more than others? Intellectual property is almost never questioned
from this perspective. But the Robinhoods of twenty first century science do.
“If
there’s no private intellectual property and all scholarly publications are
nationalized, then all people will have equal access to knowledge.”
The above quote is by Kazakhstani communist web-developer,
Alexandra Elbakyan.
 |
| Alexandra Elbakyan |
She developed Sci-Hub3, a web application that
provides the user with research papers which are not accessible without going
through the paywall, or are blocked by the Government. Attempts like these have
existed almost since the inception of the internet.
#ICanHazPDF YES YOU CAN!
One such effort started when
researchers started using the hashtag #ICanHazPDF4 on Twitter. The
users would put a request for an article by tweeting its title, and DOI with
other linked information like the publication’s link along with their email
addresses. The people who had the access to that article would email it to
them. The original tweet was then deleted. The idea was inspired from a meme
that was trending at that time- #ICanHazCheeseburger where people used to post
their pets’ photos along with this hashtag.
The fact that it was a meme, reflects
that it was the inborn response of the internet against such barriers.
Sci-hub, the website is just
“#YesYouCanHazPDF” on a larger, unlimited scale.
All you have to do is to go on the
website, enter the DOI or the title of the research paper you want and SNAP!
You have it! Or “YouCanHazIt”.
Sci-Hub got live in 2011 and ….. began
providing access to about 40 articles an hour. It now provides more than
200,000 articles an hour.
Even
before Sci-Hub, there were a lot of ‘illegal’ practices on the internet which
were used to access scientific literature free of cost. One such example is
Anonymizer5. It is a proxy server that acts as a privacy
shield between a computer and the Internet.
It is a gateway that protects the identity of the user by hiding her/his
computer's IP address. Such servers are also used to access the information
that is restricted in a particular region. That is why researchers used to use
such practices for bypassing the security protocols or paywalls. A similar
process may also be used in place of Anonymizer by using a VPN(Virtual Private
Network). They are easy to use, are available on the internet, and some of them
are free. Sci-Hub just made this whole process easier by becoming the first and
the most used website where you can download scientific literature on a massive
scale, not just e-books. Before Sci-Hub there were other websites to get
research papers for free, but they were different from Sci-Hub in design.
It
took Alexandra two or three days to write the code and upload it to free PHP
web hosting. A web hosting service allows
people to make their website accessible over the internet. So, Sci-Hub got
live in 2011 and started processing requests from users. It became popular
among the local community almost immediately and began providing access to about
40 articles an hour. It now provides more than 200,000 articles an hour.
Who
uses it? You may ask. The answer is- everyone! Sci-Hub gets traffic from every
corner of the world. It is a place where curiosity finds its way beyond all
restrictions.
 |
| One hour of Sci-Hub activity in February 2016 |
The
only problem is that it is “illegal”
The
work of Sci-hub is often considered as ‘piracy’ because it violates the law of
copyright. However, in most cases the copyright itself does not belong to
the people who had worked on the papers. The moment they submit it to the big
science publications like Elsevier, the copyright gets transferred to them. The
point that must be noticed is that all the work like writing, referring to the
other papers, peer reviewing, etc is all done on a voluntary basis i.e., for
free, but for accessing the same article, you have to pay extremely high
prices.
This
has created an informational inequality, because only students and employees of
the most wealthy universities and institutions have full access to scholarly
information, while the institutions at the lower tier and the general public
are completely deprived of it. Many people believe that this is wrong beyond
its legality. Therefore, Sci-Hub ‘fits’ the natural law which is further
described by Alexandra in the talk “Why science is better with communism? The
case of Sci-Hub”6
Well, this is ironically creepy that
while I am writing this article, a copyright infringement suit7 has been filed
by three publishing giants against Sci-Hub and Libgen before the Delhi High
Court on December 21, 2020. My views for Sci-Hub, or any such practice stand
strong regardless of the result of the lawsuit. The lawsuit and the greed of
these publishers shows that this is high time that all of us must come together
and stand against any attempt that can become a barrier between science and
ourselves. It’s time we remind them that it is not about Sci-Hub, or Alexandra,
or LibGen. These are the outcomes of the response of peoples’ struggle for
knowledge, science and a better world for all. Even if they succeed in getting Sci-Hub and Libgen completely
blocked in India through dynamic injunction, it is foolish of them to
underestimate peoples’ will to fulfill their curiosity. It will find its way to
fulfill itself by one way or another.
As shown in Elsevier’s logo8, the tree
represents the publisher, the vine- scholar, the fruit- knowledge and latin
term ‘non solus’ means ‘not alone’. It
shows that the scholars need publishers, just like the vine needs the tree to
produce fruit. But the same tree is becoming the largest barrier between
knowledge and the people. What good is the fruit if it is out of reach of the
people it is meant for?
It is time to show them that it is up to the vine to make
its own way. It is time we go open source. I know it is easier for people like
me who are not involved directly and solely with academia to say this, but it
is more difficult for the people in academia. One thing is clear that this
theft of researchers’ and peer reviewers’ labour needs to end. Knowledge is
meant to be free and it will find its way. That is why we must come in
solidarity with Alexandra and others by any means necessary.
The links mentioned in the article are
of course “for educational purpose only”, but they are also for redefining the educational
purpose.
Yatendra is an engineer and runs a Hackerspace in Greater
Noida.
[1] http://www.takepart.com/internets-own-boy/
[2] https://openaccessmanifesto.wordpress.com/
[3] https://sci-hub.se/
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICanHazPDF
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymizer
[6] https://sci-hub.se/alexandra/works/communism.pdf
[7] Sci-Hub Case: The
Court Should Protect Science From Greedy Academic Publishers
[8] What does "Non
Solus" mean in Elsevier's logo?
[For
legal reasons, I would say “I don’t support piracy” but don’t ask me how I did
research for this article.]
