Elbakyan explains that as a student in Kazakhstan, she found the “payment of $32 [Elsevier points out that it’s as high as $41.95] is just insane when you need to skim or read tens or hundreds of these papers to do research”. She adds: “I could obtain any paper by pirating it so I solved many requests and people always were very grateful for my help.”Willinsky argues, "This right to know is also behind this new, emerging academic publishing economy. It is aligned with the broader social and intellectual movement of open science."
However, the founder of Sci-Hub is currently being sued by Elsevier for copyright infringement.
Chapter 3 of my new book, International Copyright and Access to Knowledge is called "Access to scientific knowledge." It recounts the history of international copyright in scientific works. In the chapter, I note that when the international copyright system was founded, scientific journal articles were placed, by default, in the public domain. This is due in large part to the efforts of Haitian diplomat, doctor, and writer Louis-Joseph Janvier, in fighting for broad and liberal access to scientific works worldwide. It recounts historical debates over the question of whether copyright should apply to scientific works, and traces the transformation of the international copyright system and the narrowing of principles of access to scientific works.
As Willinsky notes, Elbakyan carries on a tradition of civil disobedience that represents "a 10-fold escalation of the tragic protest of Aaron Swartz, a gifted US computer scientist and entrepreneur who committed suicide two years ago after being charged with theft for downloading 4 million journal articles to his laptop." Her efforts also reflect a sentiment that can be traced right back to the founding of the international copyright system, to before a time when copyright took a wrong turn.
