[johnobrien102]

Couple of other things. Elsevier is $3 billion in revenue, not $10 billion (the author must be thinking of Reed Elsevier here, Elsevier's parent company.) So really they only have something like $3 billion reasons to not let the internet drive the costs of scientific publishing down to zero.

And to be clear, so far as I can tell, SOPA has almost nothing to do with arxiv.org, because arxiv.org publishes the manuscript, not the final version of the article. Elsevier's stated position is that publishing the manuscript version is not copyright infringement.

Even if SOPA passed, sure, it would be easier for Elsevier to shut down arxiv.org. But if arxiv.org started publishing the final version of articles for which Elsevier had obtained worldwide exclusive copyright, that would be copyright infringement anyway. So the key (it would seem to me) is whether arxiv.org publishes the final version of articles or not (they curenttly don't), not whether SOPA passes, that determines whether arxiv.org is to get shutdown.

And so if they did, the answer to the question "Could Elsevier shut down arxiv.org?" would be "Yes."

Right now, the answer is "No."

[jessriedel]

> Elsevier's stated position is that publishing the manuscript version is not copyright infringement.

Do you have a link to a place where Elsevier states this explicitly?

[johnobrien102]

http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/preprin...

"Elsevier is liberal with respect to authors and electronic preprints. Unlike some publishers, we do not consider that a preprint of an article (including a prior version as a thesis) prior to its submission to Elsevier for consideration amounts to prior publication, which would disqualify the work from consideration for re-publication in a journal. We also do not require authors to remove electronic preprints from publicly accessible servers (including the author's own home page) once an article has been accepted for publication."

manuscript ~= preprint more or less in publishing speak

[michaelvanham]

"What rights do I retain as a journal author*? [...] the right to post a pre-print version of the journal article on Internet websites including electronic pre-print servers, and to retain indefinitely such version on such servers or sites for scholarly purposes" [1]

[1] http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/rights

[biggus_dictus]

> it would be easier for Elsevier to shut down arxiv.org.

It is disheartening to think that such a thing is even remotely possible.