[kleiba]

Thanks for the upvote.

I had a feeling that the previous comment would possibly not be well received. My intention was not to make a strawman argument - that's why I added a clear caveat about the limited usefulness of analogies.

The point was perhaps a bit childish, I admit, but then again, the HN audience is very diverse with many different backgrounds. Many may be intimately familiar with academic realities, others might not and simply get triggered by the old "evil publishing corporation against freedom of information" trope.

The two examples were meant to target the latter end of the spectrum, and judging from your comment, they probably failed at what I had in mind: to allude to the fact that there a multiple parties involved here and they are coming from different perspectives and they have different interests in mind. That's where the analogies end, of course.

Sci-Hub is certainly convenient. But convenience does not justify everything.

P.S.: A potential evidence that my point about the different backgrounds of the HN crowd may have been correct is the fact that my "analogies" post is the only one that has more upvotes than downvotes.