30 Quotes by Alexandra Elbakyan

There is the possibility to be suddenly arrested for hacking.

Elsevier operates by racket: if you do not send money, you will not read any papers. On my website, any person can read as many papers as they want for free, and sending donations is their free will. Why Elsevier cannot work like this, I wonder?

I do know about stories where hackers that left Russia or Ukraine for Europe or the United States were unexpectedly arrested.

Scientific knowledge belongs to humanity.

Science should belong to scientists and not the publishers.

I know there are some reasons to suspect me: after all, I have education in computer security and was a hobby hacker in teenage years. But hacking is not my occupation, and I do not have any job within any intelligence, either Russian or some another.

There should be no obstacles to accessing knowledge.

Providing free access to research papers on websites like Sci-Hub breaks so-called copyright law that was made to taboo free distribution of information on the Internet. That includes music, movies, documentaries, books, and research articles. Not everyone agrees that copyright law should exist in the first place.

Sci-Hub arose as a tool to be used in a Russian-speaking online research community.