Writers and Editors

Sep 28, 2017 12:13 PM EDT

Publishers’ Legal Action Advances Against Sci-Hub(Diana Kwon, The Scientist, 9-19-17) "A 2016 investigation by Science revealed that between September 2015 and February 2016, Sci-Hub received 28 million download requests from all around the world. Elsevier and ACS were among the most downloaded publishers, along with Springer Nature, Wiley Blackwell, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers." The pirate site plans to ignore the lawsuits from Elsevier and the American Chemical Society. "Even though it is possible to introduce difficulties for Sci-Hub to access content, [it is] not possible to prevent this completely."—Alexandra Elbakyan, Sci-Hub founder

- PM

Apr 11, 2016 12:44 PM EDT

• Panama Papers Leak Signals a Shift in Mainstream Journalism (Jim Rutenberg, NY Times, 4-10-16) Data breach journalism: "The official WikiLeaks-ization of mainstream journalism; the next step in the tentative merger between the Fourth Estate, with its relatively restrained conventional journalists, and the Fifth Estate, with the push-the-limits ethos of its blogger, hacker and journo-activist cohort, in the era of gargantuan data breaches."..."Back at the dawn of this new, Big Breach journalism, The Times’s then-executive editor, Bill Keller, wondered aloud in the paper’s Sunday magazine whether 'The War Logs,' a huge cache of confidential war records and diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks in conjunction with The Times, Der Spiegel, The Guardian and others, represented 'some kind of cosmic triumph of transparency.' He concluded, 'I suspect we have not reached a state of information anarchy, at least not yet.'"• What are the Panama Papers? A guide to history's biggest data leak (The Guardian, 4-6-16)• The Panama Papers told us what we already knew. How we respond will be the story (Jeff Sparrow, The Guardian, 4-11-16) There’s nothing more demoralising than understanding the world is rigged against you but you can do nothing about it. But can recent leaks spark a revolt?• How Panama ended up in the middle of a financial scandal (Joshua Partlow and Ana Swanson, WaPo, 4-10-16) "...two German newspaper reporters got their hands on 11.5 million documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. The flood of disclosures that began earlier this month has revealed oceans of dark money sloshing through offshore companies the firm helped create. The leak outed the global rich and infamous: from relatives of China’s Politburo and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s cellist friend to British Prime Minister David Cameron and soccer god Lionel Messi.• Here are the most famous celebrities with ties to the huge Panama Papers leak (Fusion,4-6-16)• The Panama Papers: Where have Russia’s billions gone? (Washington Post editorial, 4-4-16)• The Panama Papers: 7 things to know (CNN Explainer, 4-6-16)

- PM

Apr 03, 2016 1:29 PM EDT

I am sure you know that in the past quarter of a century the update rate of the private physical infrastructure is going up almost exponentially. This, in turn, will make it more difficult to preserve “original documents” outside of institutional archives.I think, it is wiser to invest in a proper digital archiving. As it is, this (digital archiving) task is also complex and costly.

- James Duke. http://www.lifestorypictures.com