ACM censors linking | Hacker News Reader

ACM censors linking

realtimecollisiondetection.net

38 pointsamichail13 comments

Got an email reply from the ACM folks:

The issue here is copyright, not censorship. All of the author versions that were linked to on these pages are still available -- ACM explicitly grants individual authors the right to post their own versions of their papers on their own pages. All ACM bibliographic data, and tables of contents in the DL, are available without cost to anyone in the world. If you want the copy of a SIGGRAPH paper and an author has posted it, you can still access it without an ACM subscription. Also note there would be no problem with these pages if they linked to the ACM version of the papers. Other lists of papers, compilations that Ke-Sen Huang built (rather than copying the table of contents from a publication) are not affected. Furthermore, the SIGAsia2009 pages Ke-Sen Huang makes available are still there until the papers are available in the ACM DL in the interest of promoting the conference.

The copyright issue that applies is described in this link:

http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/copyright_policy#Li...

" ACM treats links as citations (references to objects) rather than as incorporations (embedding of objects). Permission is not needed to create links to citations in The Portal (ACM Digital Library or Online Guide to Computing Literature). ACM encourages the widespread distribution of links to the definitive versions of its copyrighted works in the ACM Digital Library and does not require that authors obtain prior permission to include such links in their new works.

However, someone who creates a work or a service whose pattern of links substantially duplicates a copyrighted work should get prior permission from the copyright holder. One example: the creator of "A Table of Contents for the Current Issue of TODS" -- consisting of citations and active links to author-versions of the works in the latest issue of TODS -- needs ACM permission because that creator is reproducing an ACM-copyrighted work. If all the links in the "Table of Contents" pointed to the ACM-held definitive versions, ACM would normally give permission because then the new work advertises an ACM work. To avoid misunderstandings, consult with ACM before duplicating an ACM work via links."

The ACM does have a reasonable legal argument that his pages duplicate the TOC. Collections/indexes of information are copyrightable so long as they so a minimal amount of creative discretion in their contents.

That said, I think it's clear the ACM's stance in attempting to limit and profit from the dissemination of its journals will ensure it is surpassed by other publication forums eventually.

Copyright does not prevent you from independently building a set of data that someone else has already built, it merely protects against copying their set verbatim.

Right but the ACM is the ultimate source of the data. They own the conference, the paper selection processes and hence the list of papers. It's hard to argue that this list was compiled without _ever_ looking at the ACM's list. It's a grey area for sure, and you could argue that if you go to the conference and simply observe the presenters and their paper titles, or even just ask the authors "Did you get a siggraph paper in? What was the title?" then that is your data, but by the same logic I can go to the World Series and live-blog a play-by-play account of the game, which would surely get me sued. (Maybe people do this I don't know I don't follow sports, but I know that the leagues claim copyright over accounts and descriptions, regardless of whether they actually have those rights.)

Going to the world series of poker is slightly different as there's potentially a contract established between you and the promoters via your ticket.

I haven't been to siggraph, but for $1,175 ( http://www.siggraph.org/s2010/for_attendees/registration ) there's surely a potential for a contract between you and the ACM via your conference registration.

Also, copyright holders don't need to enter into a contract to assert their rights. You don't enter into a contract when you watch TV but you still don't get the right copy and distribute shows (or sporting events) that you watch.

you still don't get the right copy and distribute shows (or sporting events) that you watch

But you can make a page that links to the network's website where the TV shows are downloadable for free.

See discussion here: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/a6tsm/acm_censo...

Ok, I'm as anti-censorship as the next guy, but do we actually know _why_ the ACM publications board requested their removal?

Take a look at the pages that are still up (which are for non-ACM conferences). They are a list of the proceedings, with links to freely available copies of all of the papers. Presumably, these papers are on the authors' websites.

Note that the ACM copyright form explicitly allows authors to put up a copy of their published paper on their own website. So, from what I can surmise, they requested he take down links to material that is freely and legally available.

Ah, I see. That does sound like the logical conclusion (and is just as icky as the poster suggests). But I'd still like to hear what basis ACM is using to, ah, "request" that the links be taken down.

Because they are deeplinks to papers.

But that shouldn't matter, if the ACM wants to start putting those papers up in HTML for the world to read that would be my preference anyway.

> if the ACM wants to start putting those papers up in HTML

ACM just set up a "trial deal" for access for programmers at my (largish) company. It's extremely expensive from what I've heard, so I don't think they're just going to throw them up on the web any time soon.

ACM's web presence == shit.

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