Sci-Hub’s cache of pirated papers is so big, subscription journals are doomed

Re:Sci-Hub’s cache of pirated papers is so big, subscription... by roblabla on Thursday July 27, 2017 @10:37PM (#14871504)

You don't have to download an entire torrent to access a single file. Most torrent client can prioritize files so they get downloaded first, or avoid downloading everything in favor of just one or two. That is, unless the torrent is just a single zip or something.

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Re:Sci-Hub’s cache of pirated papers is so big, subscription... by dmix on Friday July 28, 2017 @10:10AM (#14874361)

Yes I mentioned that in my comment but it's not an ideal (or even practical) interface when you have 26TB of files. You'd have to build a special torrent interface to deal with that in a useful way. Existing torrent clients are far from capable of handling this meaningfully.

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Re:Sci-Hub’s cache of pirated papers is so big, subscription... by posterboy on Friday July 28, 2017 @03:35AM (#14872630)

and if everyone does that, noone will offer the particular file except hosts, so the availabilty can be spotty - and the torrent interfaces have no way to tell upfront.

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