Denmark Blocks Sci-Hub, LibGen, YouTube Ripping Platforms, and Torrent Sites
Last updated September 26, 2019
- Danish court orders the blocking of eleven copyright infringing websites on the ISP level.
- The decision was backed by action from the Rights Alliance, and several of its members.
- The most negative blocks concern Sci-Hub and LibGen, as both played a crucial role in the scientific community of the country.
Denmark becomes the next country to block access to Sci-Hub, the popular scientific material database that offers millions of research papers that otherwise cost $30 for free. LibGen, which comes from the same group and is dedicated to e-books will also be blocked. Together with these two, the country is also forbidding access to various YouTube ripping websites, torrent indexing platforms, and pirate streaming portals. The whole crackdown action was kickstarted after the legal action taken by the “Rights Alliance”, which resulted in 11 websites getting the “illegal” tag on the court.
As the Rights Alliance warns, this will not be the last lawsuit that they are planning to file this year. They have a plan of filing five to six lawsuits each year, targeting the most prolific websites that infringe any form of copyright. This time, they targeted Sci-Hub, LibGen, Filme3d, Filmi2k, GoMovies, HDfilmcehennemi2, PopcornTime-online, and Watch 32. The reason why we see stream-ripping platforms being included in the list is that IFPI and Sony had active participation in the support of the legal action. The same goes for entities like Elsevier, the Danish Producers’ Association, Nimbus Film, Nordisk Film, Scanbox Entertainment, Zentropa Productions, and more.
Danish ISPs (Internet Service Providers) will now have to block access to the 11 illegal websites, and do so within seven days after they receive the relevant order. The court order mentions Fibia specifically, but the orders won’t be limited to Fibia only. However, and as always, these blocks are ineffective against websites like Sci-Hub and LibGen. People who want to access these knowledge-sharing platforms have to use VPN tools and TOR anyway, so there can be no profound blocking effects upon them. As the creator of the platforms Alexandra Elbakyan has stated previously, whenever a country decides to block Sci-Hub and LibGen, the two platforms actually get even more popular from the publicity they get in the news.
We are not urging you to check out or use pirating platforms, and we are by no means mocking court decisions. However, we do believe that information, especially the scientific kind should be available freely. Elsevier and other scientific publication giants have a specific model that makes them a lot of money. On the other side, however, the future of mankind is partly based on the unobstructed sharing of data between scientists, students, researchers, etc., and this is far more important than a publisher getting richer.
Paying $30 for each publication excludes large percentages of researchers and students from accessing this precious data. That said, Elsevier should find a new model of free knowledge distribution that would be fair to the creators and still profitable to them. Equally, courts should consider these aspects when they are called to reach a verdict.
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