Some of the arguments I've read against publishers are along the lines that they take papers that were funded with public money, and thus in theory are in the public domain, yet they charge an arm and a leg for that information while at the same time preventing anyone else from distributing the free versions.
So how is it that they are entitled to be payed for something they didn't create or even own for that matter? Maybe if they did actually offered an added value service, then the freebie version would be inferior and would be no need to block them from being distributed, since people would just pick their own enhanced (curated?) versions.
As far as I understand it, Elsevier should only have a say on content they actually own the copyright for, which could be a lot of papers, but if I understand correctly SciHub was publishing papers that were funded with public money, is it not? or are they also hosting papers for which the copyright is actually owned by someone else?
So how is it that they are entitled to be payed for something they didn't create or even own for that matter? Maybe if they did actually offered an added value service, then the freebie version would be inferior and would be no need to block them from being distributed, since people would just pick their own enhanced (curated?) versions.
As far as I understand it, Elsevier should only have a say on content they actually own the copyright for, which could be a lot of papers, but if I understand correctly SciHub was publishing papers that were funded with public money, is it not? or are they also hosting papers for which the copyright is actually owned by someone else?