[lioeters]

> possibly beaten only by Sci-Hub

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.

[RiceAndWater]

It's actually more the other way round, since Libgen stores all of sci-hub's papers for them.

[mikorym]

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.

[gdy]

"the USSR and their restrictive (if we are being euphemistic) policies towards academics."

What do you mean?

[alteria]

Their policies were for more than "restrictive" is how I'm reading it

See [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressed_research_in_the_Sov...

[mikorym]

Yes. I'm saying restrictive to describe the effect on academic papers. The effect on (oppression of) the academics themselves was much worse.

[gdy]

No, that's BS.

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.

[mikorym]

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.

[1] An example was when Margulis won the Fields medal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigory_Margulis. There are many other examples too.

[userbinator]

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.

[lioeters]

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.