SCIENCE’S PIRATE QUEEN; The Verge, February 8, 2018

 Ian Graber-Stiehl, The Verge; SCIENCE’S PIRATE QUEEN

"The legal campaigns against Sci-Hub have — through the Streisand effect — made the site more well-known than most mainstay repositories, and Elbakyan more famous than legal Open Access champions like Suber. The threat posed by ACS’s injunction against Sci-Hub has increased support for the site from web activists organizations such as the EFF, which considesr the site “a symptom of a serious problem: people who can’t afford expensive journal subscriptions, and who don’t have institutional access to academic databases, are unable to use cutting-edge scientific research.”

The effort may backfire. It does nothing to address disappointment scientists feel about how paywalls hide their work. Meanwhile, Sci-Hub has been making waves that might carry it further to a wider swath of both the public and the scientific community. And though Elbakyan might be sailing in dangerous waters, what’s to stop idealistic scientists who are frustrated with the big publishers from handing over their login credentials to Sci-Hub’s pirate queen?"

Guns N' Roses' Axl Rose is trying to get a 'fat photo' off the Internet; CNet, 6/5/16

Aloysius Low, CNet; Guns N' Roses' Axl Rose is trying to get a 'fat photo' off the Internet:

"What would you do if you were the lead singer of Guns N' Roses and some young punks on the Internet used a photo of you to make fat jokes? Well, Axl Rose thinks the best way to deal is to wipe all traces of the picture off the web, and he's starting with Google...

Interestingly, the copyright for the original image is tricky. While TorrentFreak did hunt down the original photographer to check if Axl Rose has the right to take down the image, Web Sheriff, the company performing the takedown, says that photographers at the singer's show sign an agreement transferring copyright ownership to his company."

UC Davis Tries to Scrub Pepper-Spray Incident From Web, Which Means It’s Now the First Result on Google; New York Magazine, 4/15/16

Brian Feldman, New York Magazine; UC Davis Tries to Scrub Pepper-Spray Incident From Web, Which Means It’s Now the First Result on Google:

"An incredibly effective way to get people to talk about something online is to say that you don’t want people to talk about it. This is known as the Streisand Effect, so called after Barbra Streisand, in 2003, tried to get outlets to stop publishing pictures of her house.

The latest very expensive and profoundly funny example of this phenomenon comes from UC Davis, which spent a whopping $175,000 trying to bury posts about the infamous 2011 incident in which a campus police officer pepper-sprayed protesting students. According to the Sacramento Bee, the university was very concerned about the search-engine results that were being served up following the event, as well as social media posts, and so they hired a number of consultants to try and improve the situation."