Just saying, sci-hub (and libgen) has turned off in my country (Netherlands). Like, they block access at an ISP level — and all ISPs and phone companies are blocking it. I imagine there might be a measurable decline in academic productivity, at that point.
Anyway, the warning is: liberal free countries can stop these things if they want to.
So… it’s up to us the public. Why can’t university libraries make their books and journals properly accessible in a digital format, like libgen and sci-hub? Why can’t they make their whole collection RAG retrivable, for that matter?
It is certainly not true that all ISPs and phone companies in the Netherlands are blocking Sci-Hub. Both my home ISP and my phone provider don't, and I'm also not aware of, nor can I find any, legal requirements for ISPs to block it. Dutch ISPs aren't in the habit of blocking things without being legally required to. Which provider are you on that does block it? That would normally be significant news and get picked up by various publications.
Thanks for the link. That is specifically about LibGen and Anna's Archive, and links to the general agreement that when a court orders one ISP to block a pirate site, others will also block it. I suppose in situations where Sci-Hub forwards you to LibGen (does it still do that?) that means you'll be blocked regardless of the blocking status of Sci-Hub itself.
I am still unable to find any news about court orders relating to Sci-Hub in particular. The biggest ISPs appear to not publish their block lists unfortunately. I did find that Delta publishes their list[1] of blocked sites which includes only sites for which I can also find news about court orders, and does not include Sci-Hub.
I queried the KPN DNS servers and they return a KPN IP address for LibGen, but a DDOS-Guard IP address for Sci-Hub, so that leads me to believe KPN doesn't block them either at least.
Anyway, the warning is: liberal free countries can stop these things if they want to.
So… it’s up to us the public. Why can’t university libraries make their books and journals properly accessible in a digital format, like libgen and sci-hub? Why can’t they make their whole collection RAG retrivable, for that matter?