> scihub gives people what they are likely already paid for

No, as long as the researcher was not bound by the grant to publish in the open and published in a journal/conference with a copyright, you do not have the legal right to get it, even if taxpayers funded the research.

It’s fucked that the law doesn’t stipulate open publications for taxpayer funded research, but that’s an issue with the law. Academic publishing isn’t a “fraud” in the normal definition.

You're countering what I perceive to be moral argument with a legal one, which would be a category error.

Yet whether the authors walk freely is entirely a legal issue, not a moral one.

“Fraud”