Sci-Hub is the site for downloading copyrighted research papers, which provides the access to the cutting edge human knowledge for the people who don't have money to pay highly expensive fees of Springer, Thomson-Reuters, etc. (even Harvard can't allow to have subscriptions to all the journal titles, not to mention independent scientists).
Unlike “The Pirate Bay” we don't have the common opinion on whether the scientific knowledge should be behind the paywall. Even the big publishers don't have satisfying explanations on why scientists should pay ~$40 for one paper: scientists do the writing and checking jobs for free. Average paper contains 10–20 references, that is almost $1000 for one publication, and scientists often need to skim through the hundreds of papers in order to make contribution to the human knowledge, which makes the science inaccessible for independent researchers.
And also unlike “The Pirate Bay”, the sci-hub.io web site was silently shut down, without media shouting aloud about every step in the process, every lawsuit and every opinion on the topic.
* * * sci-hub.bz, sci-hub.cc and scihub22266oqcxt.onion are still working, btw.
