After Being Sued To Block Sci-Hub; Swedish ISP Blocks Court's And Elsevier's Website In Protest

After Being Sued To Block Sci-Hub; Swedish ISP Blocks Court's And Elsevier's Website In Protest

6 years ago
Anonymous $L9wC17otzH

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20181104/00590940974/after-being-sued-to-block-sci-hub-swedish-isp-blocks-courts-elseviers-website-protest.shtml

Late last week, Torrentfreak had a fascinating story about Bahnhof's response to a court case demanding it block the site Sci-Hub due to demands from Elsevier that Sci-Hub was inducing infringement of academic papers. We've written in the past about Sci-Hub. Rather than an evil piracy site as Elsevier likes to imply, it is a very clever system to allow academics to share and access other academic works. Of course, Elsevier prefers to lock up academic research that it did not pay for, which is a travesty. And it has gone after Sci-Hub in multiple jurisdictions, and is constantly playing a form of Whac-a-Mole as Sci-Hub keeps on moving around (not to mention each attempt at taking it down only seems to add to Sci-Hub's popularity). In this case, Elsevier sought a blocking order in Sweden. The Swedish ISP, Bahnhof, which has spent years pushing back against copyright maximalist extremism, but without much luck.

In giving in to the block demand, however, Bahnhof went a step further. It also put up a "block" for any subscriber visiting Elsevier's sites or the court's sites: