Sci-Hub is a site founded by Alexandra Elbakyan that offers a free doorway to paywalled research. Twitter barred the site due to violating the forged social media platform policy. However, Alexandra Elbakyan considers that this is an attempt to calm the rising support from the scientific community amidst a high-profile court case in India. This banning news was found on TorrentFreak which is a publication dedicated to bringing forward the most recent news about privacy, copyright, privacy and everything related to filing sharing. It is not a news aggregator but always has a focus on exclusive and unsullied stories.
The site provides free access to paywalled research papers to millions of people and that is why also known as the “The Pirate Bay of Science”. Accessing Journal articles costs a lot so many researchers and writers use this service of Sci-Hub to avoid those costs. Although, publishers are discontented about the free distribution of such content because they feel it is a threat to their multi-billion dollar business and argue that the site breaches their copyright. So, they tried to shut it down via numerous lawsuits besides ISPs around the world. Sci-hub founder criticises Twitter Scihub indiavan sartorrentfreak over counterfeit content.
What are the blocking proceedings of Twitter’s sci-hub in India?
Sci-Hub has been the focus of a high-profile India lawsuit where Elsevier, Wiley, and the American Chemical Society wish to block the site. The case isn’t as simple as in other countries, because access to Sci-Hub is seen as imperative by many local academic institutes. Twitter with over 185k followers and worked without prominent issues for nine years sci-hub and the founder Elbakyan believes that it may be related to the legal action in India. The social media platform doesn’t enlist any solid record of banning and just mentions the reason for policy violation and the fact is that Twitter’s decision can’t be pleaded.
Sci-hub the pirate bay of science journals got the message from Twitter that “Your account has been permanently suspended due to Twitter policies violation specifically the Counterfeiting Policy.” Twitter also added in a translated Russian language that its decision is not subject to appeal.
What was the reaction of the Sci-hub publisher regarding this ban?
Academic publishers Wiley and Elsevier and the American Chemical Society filed a suit with the Delhi High Court, about asking Indian social media platforms to block Sci-Hub. But the court rejected the publishers’ requests and declare it as an issue of public importance that gives some time to the scientific community to weigh in.
While the Sci-Hub founder had been using Twitter to gather and collect Indian researchers’ responses, they argue that Sci-Hub is crucial to their work. Still, it is uncertain if this Twitter sci-hub banning is directly related to the court case, but “it happened right after Indian scientists dismayed against academic publisher Elsevier when Sci-Hub posted on Twitter about the fear of being blocked. Elbakyan told TorrentFreak that Twitter did not react to the verge’s request for making any comment.
Moreover, before the suspension, the founder of sci-hub Alexandra Elbakyan already started archiving the tweets and other responses of its site. He did not do this just for the historical record but also to use in court as a piece of evidence. He also added that he has forwarded the collected data to the lawyer Nilesh Jain who is going to read them all aloud in court to prove that Sci-Hub should not be blocked on Twitter.
Sci-hub is a massive support for academics and researchers!!!
Over the past quite a few days, many Indian researchers and academics are relying on Sci-Hub’s content and also supported the tweets of the platform. After the episode of Twitter Scihub indiavan sartorrentfreak the tweets from these researchers and academic supporters are still up, but they’re harder to find. Plus Sci-Hub podium can no longer call for support either. That’s all gone after the banning and now they can lie and pretend to be the supporter with a saying that there was no hold up of sci-hub and there will be no way to ensure that!
Originally posted 2023-03-25 10:12:03.
