Books and scientific papers are considered some of the most valuable sources of knowledge on the planet. Millions rely on them for education and insight but while information wants to be free, this content comes with a price tag.
Publishers are therefore desperate to prevent people from accessing their premium content from pirate sites. A key weapon of choice to achieve this in the UK is the site-blocking injunction. Obtainable from the High Court, these court orders require internet service providers to prevent their users from accessing specific domains and over the years dozens have been granted.
The Publishers Association
In 2015, The Publishers Association, an organization supporting members producing digital and print books, research journals and educational resources, broke new ground by becoming the first publishing entity to use Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to obtain blocking measures.
This campaign has continued for years and now encompasses not only pirate site domains, but also proxy and mirror domains that have the purpose of circumventing earlier orders. This September the list was expanded and a month later, expanded again.
The usual targets of The Publishers Association include domains that facilitate access to the popular Libgen library and eBook portals eBookee and FreeBookSpot. The trend was maintained this week when ISP TalkTalk revealed that more domains had been blocked in the UK. The new additions are as follows:
ebookee.unblockit.kim, ebookee.123unblock.world, ebookee.mrunblock.bar, ebookee.nocensor.biz, ebookee.unbl4you.cyou, ebookee.unbl0ck.icu, ebookee.unblockproject.top, ebookee.proxybit.sbs, freebookspot.unblockit.kim, libgen.unblockit.kim, libgen.123unblock.world, libgen.mrunblock.bar, libgen.nocensor.biz, libgen.unbl4you.cyou,, libgen.unbl0ck.icu, libgen.unblockproject.top, libgen.proxybit.sbs
The Publishers Association is not the only group of its type utilizing blocking orders in the UK. Other key players are major publishers Elsevier and Springer Nature who, over the years, have turned notorious academic papers platform Sci-Hub into their nemesis.
New Blocks Target Sci-Hub
Along with publisher Wiley, Elsevier and Springer Nature have engaged in numerous legal battles against Sci-Hub and founder Alexandra Elbakyan (1,2,3,4) but to date, little has prevented Sci-Hub from operating.
As a result, the publishers have resorted to site-blocking injunctions. They obtained one in the UK back in February and then expanded on that with new blocks in September.
This week they added two more domains – sci-hub.ru and scihub.unblockit.kim. All of the major UK ISPs will have to prevent their customers from accessing them but whether that will have any serious or long-term effect is harder to gauge.
At least for now, we have to presume that the publishers believe the strategy works but it seems counterintuitive that people who want to seek out knowledge in complex scientific papers are incapable of spending five minutes on Google to find out just how easily these blocks are circumvented.
