Note that the article bends over backwards to underline the fact that Sci-Hub operates illegally. Although copyright infringement does occur, this is not true for all cases, i.e. Sci-Hub is not comparable to the Napster of old or lib-gen.

This is because some of the research (actually I would wager that at least >half, but don't have any figures to back this claim), is supported by public funds and hence should, by definition, not be copyrightable