&gt; an effort by some of the &quot;ebookers&quot; to plant proxies in various universities&#x27; networks that would perform much the same function<p>Yep they did that, it&#x27;s called ezproxy.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;kanzure&#x2F;ezproxy-urls&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;urls.txt" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;kanzure&#x2F;ezproxy-urls&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;urls.txt</a><p>scihub uses this AFAIK.