Who Is Downloading Pirated Papers?

Who Is Downloading Pirated Papers? EVERYONE

In rich and poor countries, researchers turn to the Sci-Hub website

John Bohannon | April 28, 2016

[Bogger's note: In my experience some students using Sci-Hub do not know how to use the available resources at the Library of their University and simply find Sci-Hub easier to work with. In some cases they are aware, but do not have access to Interlibrary Loan to obtain journal material not covered by their Library's subscription services.]
Just as spring arrived last month in Iran, Meysam Rahimi sat down at his university computer and immediately ran into a problem: how to get the scientific papers he needed. He had to write up a research proposal for his engineering Ph.D. at Amirkabir University of Technology in Tehran. His project straddles both operations management and behavioral economics, so Rahimi had a lot of ground to cover.
But every time he found the abstract of a relevant paper, he hit a paywall. Although Amirkabir is one of the top research universities in Iran, international sanctions and economic woes have left it with poor access to journals. 

Just one server in Sci-Hub. "This is a free and comprehensive report about sci-hub.bz. sci-hub.bz is hosted in on a server with an IP address of 104.28.21.155. The website sci-hub.bz is expected to be earning an estimated $94 USD on a daily basis. If sci-hub.bz was to be sold it would possibly be worth $34,450 USD (based on the daily revenue potential of the website over a 12 month period)." Source: http://sci-hub.bz.w3snoop.com/

<more at http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/04/whos-downloading-pirated-papers-everyone; related articles and links: http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2016/03/sci-hub-libgen-and-total-information.html (Sci-Hub, LibGen, and Total Information Awareness. March 21, 2016) and http://blog.dshr.org/2016/03/elsevier-and-streisand-effect.html (Elsevier and the Streisand Effect. March 15, 2016)>