Further Understanding the Dark Web
Past the search results of popular search engines like Google and Yahoo lies the Dark Web, a great entity of unknown that lies the less-savory fascinations like drugs, porn, and similar unappealing focuses. Sci-Hub is a site that used to reside in the reaches of the Dark Web. Sci-Hub served to provide access to information that was not previously available to people outside academic settings without a steep fee. Sci-Hub sought to help those who could not access information provided in various scholarly journals and similar journals that could be only accessed via a University or school access point. This access to these journals and the like is given at the expense at the journals, and is thus considered a copyright infringement because only those journals are entitled to those articles and they determine who and for what price the articles can be provided.
Though definitely admirable, the work of Alexandra Elbakyan was definitely illegal. Much like how music and film piracy sites work and are later prosecuted for their illegal actions, Elbakyan worked in the same way in regard to these journals. Her purpose is clearly something to be commended, but her means were not justified. The problem of open access is one that resonates in the world today, only certain people are able to access all the information that they could want and need, creating a barrier between them and those that cannot access, and thus be informed, of the happenings in the world. Elbakyan’s work certainly makes a dent in the barrier, but an illegal and somewhat unjustified dent. Instead of taking action against the barrier in this fashion, a compromise between the journals and the rest of the people must be made. The prices must be cut, and the people must be willing to abide by the laws in place to access.
