If governments fund scientific research, should for-profit publishers be able to copyright the findings? In 2015, Elsevier, a major publisher of academic journals, filed a lawsuit against Sci-Hub, a website started in 2011 that now houses roughly 60 million pirated articles for free download — a violation of copyright law. In 2016, the case turned an ongoing debate about access to research in the digital age into a public debate. Open-access advocates, like Sci-Hub’s founder, Alex…