Today I learned that Library Genesis is actually "powered by Sci-Hub" as its primary source.
So I guess they're sister projects by similarly minded people (who seem to be mostly/originally based in Slavic countries, which I find interesting culturally - perhaps it's due to a looser legal environment + activist academics?).
> Just about everybody in academia knows about it.
That really says something about the state of society, this tension between copyright laws (and the motivations behind them) and the intellectual ideal of free and open access to knowledge.
I am not an expert on the topic, but I believe that in the former Soviet Union it was common between mathematicians to pass around preprints (a la arXiv). These then perculated through to the West. I think it had to do with the USSR and their restrictive (if we are being euphemistic) policies towards academics.
There are well known cases of genetics and cybernetics being banned for ideological reasons during Stalin's time. Scientific books and articles of convicted 'enemies of the state' were dangerous to possess in that time too. Some scientists used ideological 'arguments' in scientific debates which were dangerous to argue against.
But all that, AFAIK, ended after Stalin's death in 1953.
Moreover, I've never heard anything about mathematics in this regard.
Not sure what you are saying. Mathematicians were not even allowed to travel abroad [1] and any "concessions" were essentially as it pleased the USSR state. Only from 1990 was movement free in the true sense of the word.
What does that have to do with sharing knowledge in the USSR and the countries in the Soviet block?
It was never in Soviet ideology to hide knowledge behind paywalls. See, for example, this [0] post about Mir publishing house and warm comments of Indians who grew up with their books. Sci-hub's ideology is just continuation of this approach.
> Sci-hub's ideology is just continuation of this approach.
Actually, that was the point of what I was saying—the mathematicians had to be inventive and thus passed around preprints that they knew would also be read in the West.
who seem to be mostly/originally based in Slavic countries, which I find interesting culturally - perhaps it's due to a looser legal environment + activist academics?
You see the same situation with Asia --- it's a collectivist culture, they have a very different perspective on IP in general.
That makes sense, thanks for pointing that out. I can see how it's related to the value system of collectivist (as opposed to individualist) cultures, and how they see intellectual property - as a common good, beyond personal/private ownership.
Today I learned that Library Genesis is actually "powered by Sci-Hub" as its primary source.
So I guess they're sister projects by similarly minded people (who seem to be mostly/originally based in Slavic countries, which I find interesting culturally - perhaps it's due to a looser legal environment + activist academics?).
> Just about everybody in academia knows about it.
That really says something about the state of society, this tension between copyright laws (and the motivations behind them) and the intellectual ideal of free and open access to knowledge.