What was especially surprising for me is that there are many people who view Sci-Hub as some kind of a tool to change the system. Like changing the system was a goal, and Sci-Hub was a tool to achieve it.
For me, Sci-Hub has a value by itself, as a website where users can access knowledge. There are many websites where you can see pictures, share tweets, download music, read ebooks. And Sci-Hub is a website where you can read research articles.
I think that whether I can be a Russian spy is being investigated by U.S. government since they learned about Sci-Hub, because that is very logical: a Russian project, that uses university accounts to access some information, of course that is suspicious. But in fact Sci-Hub has always been my personal enterprise.
Sci-Hub arose as a tool to be used in a Russian-speaking online research community.
There are so many sci-fi fans and it's such a big business now. So many people love sci-fi, and they're so loyal. I would be lying if I said that the fact that I had been on a very popular sci-fi show and had some recognition in that world didn't help me get the job on another sci-fi show.
I perceive Sci-Hub as a practical side of my research.
I like their slogan 'making uncommon knowledge common' very much, but as far as I can tell Elsevier has not mastered this job well. Sci-Hub is helping them to fulfill their mission.
I could obtain any paper by pirating it, so I solved many requests and people always were very grateful for my help. After that, I created sci-hub.org website that simply makes this process automatic and the website immediately became popular.
Sci-Hub always intended to be legal, and advocated for the copyright law to be repealed or changed, so that it will not prohibit the development of science.
I think the sci-fi world allows for exploration of that that isn't on the nose and that isn't preachy, but it's kind of artful and explores it differently. I think there's more imagination in sci-fi. There's more chance to kind of explore perspective and not have it so grounded in this world that we live in, which is so stuck in a patriarchal kind of system.
A purpose gives meaning to life. It is like the hub in a wheel -- with every spoke fitted into it to make a strong and perfect circle. Without such a hub, spokes will not radiate evenly and your wheel will lack strength, will tend to break apart on the first good bump it hits. Given a strong hub, a strong purpose, a person can take a surprising number of shocks and bumps on the outside rim without sustaining permanent damage.
I started a crowdfunding campaign on Sci-Hub to buy additional drives, and soon had my own copy of the database collected by LibGen, around 21 million papers.
After my cancer diagnosis this year, I was offered a choice of treatments. I wanted to make an informed decision. This meant reading scientific papers. Had I not used the stolen material provided by Sci-Hub, it would have cost me thousands.
Social media is such a powerful tool and I would love it to be a hub of celebration rather than focusing on negativity.
It may be well possible that phished passwords ended up being used at Sci-Hub. I did not send any phishing emails to anyone myself. The exact source of the passwords was never personally important to me.
Music is a tool. Lighting is a tool. Power point is a tool. Getting those things right is not the goal. God is the goal. Those are just tools. And we can real easily turn into worshippers of all the tools, rather than remembering that this is simply a tool to get the job done which is to help connect people with God and to help inspire people.
I'm not from a particularly sci-fi background. I'm not anti sci-fi at all, but I've never been known as a sci-fi writer and, suddenly, I was creating a flagship BBC sci-fi show, which is terrifying sometimes.