[lambdaelite]

Silicon Valley and YC don't exactly have a stellar reputation for ethical behavior. Having a "pirate website" at the top of the news page doesn't exactly change that perception.

I totally get that journals are evil, and charging money for research generated with public funds is questionable. It's very frustrating as a small entity needing to view articles, and being asked to cough up $25-50. That said, there are legitimate alternatives (like emailing the corresponding author, or professional society memberships, or alumni library access, or DeepDyve). The linked website is flagrantly violating copyright and that should be cause for concern; not breaking the law is part of every engineering (and professional) ethical code.

[zanny]

Distinguish ethical from legal. Not all laws are ethical (depending on where you live, most laws could easily be unethical), and this website goes out of its way to say why the laws they violate are not.

[alanwatts]

>One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: There are just laws and there are unjust laws. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with Saint Augustine that “An unjust law is no law at all.” Now what is the difference between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust?

-Dr. King, Letter From a Birmingham Jail

[lambdaelite]

One guidance for the ethical side are the guidelines agreed upon by professional associations. I can't think of any that condone copyright infringement.

[njharman]

I disagree that that is a good source of guidance. Even if we take that as a given, OF COURSE few organizations promote breaking the law (sometimes a crime it self).

Although, many, many push to change the law / restrictions put on scientific research. I can't spend time to google and list all the references. start here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_science#Projects_promotin...

[wolfgke]

Another guidance for the ethical side is the concrete behaviour of working scientists: If they would send you the paper if you asked them by email, this is a clear statement that copyright violation is perfectly okay.

[mirimir]

Way back in the day, we would buy reprints from the journal, and then mail them to requesters. And then Xerox machines appeared, and we made our own copies. Now we just email PDFs.

[lambdaelite]

At least in my discipline, authors either retain copyright to their manuscript and can disseminate that freely, or they are able to personally disseminate the final published article (sometimes including on their own website). No copyright transgression occurs in this case.

[rhblake]

Generally speaking: what's legal and what's morally right sometimes diverge. Civil disobedience can be a necessity.

If being a professional means blindly following laws without thinking, I'm happy this place is not just for "professionals".

[kasbah]

I think you are making a mistake of equating ethics with legality.

Furthermore, I am not affiliated with YC and have never been even been to Silicon Valley. I merely use this news/link aggregator because the content and links interest me.

Linking to a site doesn't even mean you are condoning it. Would you really rather the mods censor content like this because they are worried about their reputation? I think that is the day I would stop reading HN.

[smanzer]

Well, I'm not from Silicon Valley or YC, and I avoid torrenting music etc because it takes more directly from content creators, but the publishers' business practices put this on a whole different level to me. Also, half the time for the old-school stuff that one has to cite in the introduction for a paper, the corresponding author is dead but the paper is still under copyright.

[unixhero]

Booo.

edit: Those alternatives will not work 99% of the times. I love the fact that it says pirate site.

Information wants to be free.

[nefitty]

Hm, let's investigate how things get to the front page of HN. Ah, here it is, on a page titled "Hacker News FAQ": https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html under the header "How are stories ranked?"

Maybe perceptions are completely off base sometimes.

[MicroBerto]

Regardless of your personal stance, this is newsworthy for hackers and it belongs on a site named "Hacker News" if the users upvote it as such.

With that said, the site isn't working for me. Pirates better not quit their day jobs.

[supergreg]

Does YC wants to change that perception? In this other thread from today people suggest civil disobedience regarding copyright: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11092016

[chris_wot]

And? That's not HN's stance. That's the opinion of people who have a login here, in an ongoing and free wheeling discussion! Sheesh.

[lambdaelite]

If they want to seriously engage regulated industries like finance, medical, energy, etc., they need to. As it stands now, an association with them is suspect.

[mpclark]

I too am disappointed to see this here, though the young hotheads are obviously out in force today and relishing sticking it to the man.

Surely we are better than this.

One of the earliest lessons I was taught, and I taught my kids, is that if somebody else has something we want and doesn't want to share it, it's not OK to just take it.

[kasbah]

Firstly, copying isn't the same as taking.

More importantly most of the scientists want their research to be read and studied as widely as possible but have their careers to worry about. The journal system is being widely criticised but academics are not in the best position to take action against it.

The dissemination of knowledge, with it's potential for reducing inequality and increasing social mobility, is much more important than the profitability of journal publishers and outweighs the risk of hurt feelings due to a sense of ownership of knowledge (which seems like a fallacy in itself) that anyone involved could possibly have.

[lambdaelite]

So why not email the corresponding author? I have yet to not get (or give) a manuscript that way. From my own perspective, each time I respond I'm possibly getting another citation. It's also a great form of networking.

[Riesling]

When I do research I go through a lot of papers, many of them are discarded after the first couple of sentences. It would slow me down a lot, when I had to contact all of the authors in the first place.

How useful would google really be, if you had to contact every author before reading the actual website?

[germanier]

What's the practical difference between getting any paper you need from the authors and getting any paper you need from such a website? Except much more work for anyone in the former case without any benefit.

[lambdaelite]

Practically speaking, none I can think of. But I completely disagree that the networking aspect has no benefit.

[kasbah]

Because it currently wouldn't be possible to make a site of this scale with that method.

[wolfgke]

> One of the earliest lessons I was taught, and I taught my kids, is that if somebody else has something we want and doesn't want to share it, it's not OK to just take it.

That is why I don't take it away, but copy it instead.

[Riesling]

> One of the earliest lessons I was taught, and I taught my kids, is that if somebody else has something we want and doesn't want to share it, it's not OK to just take it.

Like the absolute power of a dictator?

Of course this is a hyperbolic example, but the real world is not only black and white and simple rules like that cannot cope with the complexity of it. The question is, where we should draw the line. And many people in here agree, that publicly funded research should be made available to the public at no further costs for the greater good.

[njharman]

So,

If, the king, reserves all the political power to themselves you would not join (and expect your children) to not join in a revolution against them?

If corrupt gov officials & cronies. keep all the food/medical aide for themselves, you would let your family starve, sick child die before stealing what you needed?

My point is your "lesson" is overly simplistic and naive. Reality is much grayer and messier. Some believe what in other contexts would be considered unethical, is morally justified, even morally required when it is needed to combat injustice/other unethical situation. But, sometimes the means do not justify ends. (messy). Why you and your kids need critical thinking more than simplistic platitudes.