Cloudflare has terminated service to Sci-Hub, the site that provides paywall-free access to virtually all scholarly work, citing Aaron Swartz as inspiration — Cloudflare previously serviced the sci-hub.la, sci-hub.tv, and sci-hub.tw domains, but in response to an injunction obtained by the American Chemical Society, they will no longer provide that service.
Sci-Hub tweeted that Cloudflare's termination of service was "not critical but may cause a short pause in website operation."
Cloudflare has been previously targeted by copyright enforcers, when the RIAA argued that it was working "in active concert or participation" with the website MP3skull; it fought that order, and eventually lost, though the court did not rule on whether its services constituted "active concert or participation" for copyright enforcement purposes.
It appears that Cloudflare did not challenge the order to terminate service to Sci-Hub.
Sci-Hub remains accessible through its Tor hidden service address, scihub22266oqcxt.onion.
"The court's affirmative ruling does not apply to search engines writ large, but only to those entities who have been in active concert or participation with Sci-Hub, such as websites that host ACS content stolen by Sci-Hub," Ruskin told us at the time.Cloudflare does more than linking of course, but the company doesn't see itself as a web hosting service either. While it still may not agree with the "active concert" classification, there's no evidence that Cloudflare objected in court this time.
As for Sci-Hub, they have to look elsewhere if they want another CDN provider. For now, however, the site remains widely available.
Cloudflare Terminates Service to Sci-Hub Domain Names [Ernesto/Torrentfreak]
(via /.)
