<i>&gt; requesting payment is a deal between publishers and writers</i><p>Not in the case we&#x27;re talking about here. Sci-hub doesn&#x27;t provide copies of novels. It provides copies of scientific research papers, for which we, the public, have already paid with our tax dollars. The payments to journals are not deals between those publishers and the scientists; they are deals between those publishers and the government, to get us to pay again for something we&#x27;ve already paid for.