Re: [DIYbio] sci-hub.org (SciHub) paper/pdf access

[Cathal Garvey]

If they exist in a jurisdiction that doesn't care about this kind of
thing (.ru?) then they'd be well-served setting up an API for people to
altruistically provide and announce new gateways.

There are by now several monolithic setups to provide paper access, and
while I'm very grateful to them I think they're a transitional stage in
a progression towards decentralisation. Not because decentralisation is
warm and fuzzy, but because things with heads can have them cut off; as
you point out, their gateways are already compromised if anyone cares
to look. An API that allows people to make contributions through
university firewalls and trivially add new gateways, with them merely
as a "tracker", would make the system more bulletproof.

I'm surprised that EZproxy doesn't get detected by university staff,
though. Even in Cork University when I worked there, they were able to
detect Skype clients, bittorrent (even encrypted) and other non-email,
non-http activity pretty quickly and would visit the lab to scold
anyone present about the use of stuff that offended their fascist
netblock. Surely an open proxy like EZproxy would show up pretty
quickly?

I would have thought something more like an email-bot gateway would be
more easily set up; encrypted always-on IMAP connections are the norm,
so Uni firewalls are unlikely to have any objection to a high-traffic
IMAP connection, but you could knock together an email bot for fetching
stuff, encrypting it, and posting it somewhere pretty trivially with
Portable Python and a few choice modules. Heck, I've been meaning to
write something like that just as an alternative to DynDNS so I can run
arbitrary shell commands on a computer connected through a 3G modem.
Email's overlooked as a tunnel transport, if you don't care about
latency.. :)

On Tue, 21 May 2013 13:24:12 -0500
Bryan Bishop <kan...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Here's a site that is fetching papers through multiple ezproxy exit
> nodes (or possibly they are using compromised servers, or professors
> who have given them socks/ssh access, or something):
> http://sci-hub.org/ ( currently this is http://46.38.63.192/ and
> http://twitter.com/Sci_Hub )
>
> So far the coverage seems pretty good. One major downside to their
> site is that they are exposing where their exit nodes are located.
> This is a huge vulnerability that will cause a lot of problems for
> whoever is providing access to ezproxy at each of these schools.
>
> For example, I am seeing watermarks in papers like these:
>
> "This content downloaded from 137.99.31.134 on Tue, 21 May 2013
> 14:00:58 PM"
> http://sci-hub.org/pdfcache/aea5ca568acd5fd36948214424c20b54.pdf
>
> where it is trivial to identify the account belonging to
> http://uconn.edu/... oops!
>
> and:
>
> "University of Minnesota - Twin Cities"
> http://sci-hub.org/pdfcache/a258a4344b325b29d0ce7f9462e11277.pdf
>
> These issues will destroy this service and it is critical that they
> fix this. A friend has reported my complaints here (I was complaining
> in ##hplusroadmap and he was kind enough to tell them before I wrote
> this email):
> http://sci-hub.copiny.com/problem/details/id/91055
>
> """
> Господа, я очень признателен вам за ваш сервис. Без него я бы не смог
> прочитать многие заблоченные статьи. Потому я хочу чтобы он жил и
> здравствовал как можно дольше.
>
> PDF которые скачиваются через ваш прокси содержат водяные знаки, IP
> адреса, т.е. улики которые свидетельствуют против университетов через
> которые происходит скачивание. Это может повлечь за собой последствия
> со стороны издательств.
>
> Я предлагаю вам ознакомиться вот с этой программой написанной
> энтузиастом открытого доступа к статьям:
> https://github.com/kanzure/pdfparanoia
>
> Внедрите её в ваш сервис и она позволит вам убрать водяные знаки, сто
> увеличит безопасность.
> """
>
> You can remove watermarks and other identifying information inserted
> into papers with pdfparanoia:
> https://github.com/kanzure/pdfparanoia
>
> Otherwise, I think sci-hub.org is amazing and I wish them the best.
> Also, it would be great if they could, you know, not redirect to
> kremlin.ru...
>
> - Bryan
> http://heybryan.org/
> 1 512 203 0507
>

[Bryan Bishop]

On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 4:16 PM, Cathal Garvey <cathal...@cathalgarvey.me> wrote:

netblock. Surely an open proxy like EZproxy would show up pretty
quickly?

You got it backwards; EZproxy is something the schools install. Willingly. They pay for it.

https://github.com/kanzure/ezproxy-urls/blob/master/urls.txt