Cloudflare ordered by judge to help unmask two website owners A subpoena can be served against Cloudflare compelling it to reveal the identities of two website owners, a New York judge has ruled. The content delivery network has effectively been told to identify the people behind LibGen and BookFi in a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by academic book publisher Elsevier. "The …
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Elsevier is just a commercial publisher. It's the academics who measure themselves or others on publications and not quality of work that create a scenario in which this business model can flourish.
In the past publishing in academic journals may have made sense. These days anyone can self-publish so the journals bring two things - peer review and an audience.
The former is of limited benefit now that anyone can comment, critique or reproduce. The second sites like Sci-Hub can provide.
[and I do own shares in Elsevier's parent, as will many of you]
Yet perhaps half the papers are rubbish, because the peer review is absolutely rubbish.
"Elsevier is just a commercial publisher."
No, commercial publishers PAY the writers. Elsevier behaves like a Vanity house. They are charging the writers, providing poor peer review (the peer reviewers usually are not paid by journals!) and overcharging readers and especially researchers for access.
The charges to readers might be justified if they where Marvel, Netflix etc, or paid for quality peer review but still it would be wrong as they don't pay writers. Elsevier is in a dominant position and stifling research. Boycott publishing on them or paying to read.
Elsevier doesn't pay for the research either which is a LOT more expensive than writing for Mills & Boone.
So who are the pirates, the bandits?
>> "Elsevier is just a commercial publisher."
> No, commercial publishers PAY the writers. Elsevier behaves like a Vanity house.
It's worse than that. Elsevier has been taking freely available work and paywalling it without permission, then getting the non-paywalled copies taken down.
That's fullscale piracy. If the shoe fits....
Their activities have had a major chilling effect on scientific publication. Their business model needs to be terminate with extreme predjudice.
The WhoIs information for the sites leads to WhoIs Privacy Corp domiciled in the Bahamas.
Their web site claims it will protect your identity as the owner of a domain and only reveal it under specific circumstances. These include "To comply with a subpoena or other legal process served upon us.".
I would assume that Elsevier drew a blank here as well if they are now going after Cloudflare.
It is not at all surprising that the domain registration process allows this to happen.
I was checking my ports and connections the other day and who do I see hogging them the most? Cloudflare, even after I had closed my browser.
I fixed that.
As for the WhoIs, if it shows the WhoIs Privacy Corp domiciled in the Bahamas is the website owner, than that's who they need to go after.
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