I can give an example of a title change AWAY from the original article title. I was quite puzzled by that when it happened, and I've never heard an explanation of why it happened. I heard about an article from a researcher on human genetics who was writing to other human genetics researchers on an email list. I meet many of those researchers in person in a local "journal club." The researcher was asking for responses from his colleagues about the article, and I thought the article was interesting enough to bring up here on Hacker News. My submission of the article here
was under the original article title, namely "23andMe disproves its own business model." The ensuing Hacker News discussion had several commenters (who apparently had paid their hard-earned money for the services of the 23andMe company) complaining about the title, which I didn't editorialize or spin in any way. I agree that the article was controversial, but a legitimate researcher in the field thought that it was a worthwhile read, which is the only reason I submitted the article to HN. After I no longer had my edit window for the submission title, some anonymous person with title-editing power changed the title to "23andMe finds Parkinsons only 24% heritable" (which is a title that reveals considerable ignorance about human genetics, and doesn't fairly represent the content of the submitted article). As I post this, the original article is not showing up to me by following the original link, but Google's cache
I can bear with curators here changing article titles to original article titles (or to titles that condense original article titles to less than 90 characters, which is the hard-coded length limit here), but I sure would like an explanation of what a user is to do if it's possible to submit an article with EXACTLY the original article title (my usual practice) and then have the title changed to a stupid-looking title that is still under my screen name. If curators are going to do that kind of thing, they should at least sign their edits to take accountability for them. (That is the usual practice in another online forum where I have editing powers on other people's posts, where I use this same screen name I use here. If I edit someone's submission title, an edit trail identifies that I did that.)
>If curators are going to do that kind of thing, they should at least sign their edits to take accountability for them. //
Yes, it's very rude to alter someone else's text without claiming 'credit' for doing so or referring the edits back to be accepted by the attributed author.
FWIW it's also an infringement of the moral rights enshrined within copyright law. You can't modify someone else's work without a license to do so (generally); I couldn't find any reference to such a license term in the YC site details. Without such a license a posted story that the moderators dislike [is it just pg?] should just be deleted, the site clearly has no duty to carry the story (by which I mean title and strap linking to the original article) but it also appears to lack any license to amend said submissions.
While it is true that comment submissions to HN give an implied license for HN to post the content, with copyright being held by the submitter, you can't copyright names, titles, or short phrases (see, e.g., the 6th entry down in this FAQ section from the Copyright Office - http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html). Because of this, there is no license needed to amend a title to an article as no one owns rights to it legally.
That said, I once had a legal submission amended to a title that was really wrong legally and therefore sympathize with the sentiments expressed by tokenadult. It is one thing to clarify or to trim fluff from a title but it is another to guess at what a better title might be for a technical area that is beyond the expertise of a moderator. Hence, caution ought to be used. On balance, though, I have found the moderators to be thoughtful when they do make such changes and so I am sure this is just one of the hazards of trying to monitor a site that can include complex materials from varying sources.
That said, I once had a legal submission amended to a title that was really wrong legally
Because I always appreciate your posts, and I would hate to be misled by any title that was put on them by someone else, I'd love to see the link to the example you have in mind.
Thanks for your comments on the legal background to the issue at hand. Certainly my claim is not that HN cannot do whatever HN's leaders like. I am simply suggesting that I would like to be on notice, as one user among thousands, about what best behavior here is.
>you can't copyright names, titles, or short phrases //
That's not quite true.
The "title" of a submission is part of the submission the submission itself being the work. As long as the work is sufficiently substantive then copyright will protect it as a whole.
The linked document refers to things like the title of a book wherein you wish to use the title separately to refer to the work. An author can't claim that you infringed their copyright simply because you referred to their work. This is not the situation at hand. HN is not merely using the title it is altering it and presenting it as the substantial part of the complete work that it indeed is. If you think about it you'll see how untenable your limited interpretation is, under your interpretation I can take a Harry Potter work and retitle it and add my name as author because all I've altered is the title and name ... to recap it is a particular use of the title that your link refers to and not to modifying without license.
Now, arguably in the listings of stories HN could write a new title but on the page when presenting the submitted work they would still lack license to present the work modified (ie with their title).
HN should either reject the work as a submission, retract the work or seek a license to modify it. The simplest thing would be to just add some boilerplate that says "by submitting content we reserve the right to alter it for editorial purposes". Though it would be nice to allow the user to choose to retract the story or allow it as edited.
There may well be a fair use argument for content created in the USA. I doubt there is for content created by European users.²
FWIW altering a title could also cause defamation or be an act of libel but such situations are relatively unlikely. Modification of a substantial part of a copyright work without a license is infringing already. IANA(IP)L but arguing that a HN submission¹ is a work for copyright purposes seems pretty straight forward.
--
¹ that's not machine generated or particular short so as to lack discreteness or substance enough to qualify for being a work.
² I've not seen enough case law on internet content to determine how location of created content is judged; is content created via your form considered to be created where I am, where your company resides, where your servers are or what.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2813270
was under the original article title, namely "23andMe disproves its own business model." The ensuing Hacker News discussion had several commenters (who apparently had paid their hard-earned money for the services of the 23andMe company) complaining about the title, which I didn't editorialize or spin in any way. I agree that the article was controversial, but a legitimate researcher in the field thought that it was a worthwhile read, which is the only reason I submitted the article to HN. After I no longer had my edit window for the submission title, some anonymous person with title-editing power changed the title to "23andMe finds Parkinsons only 24% heritable" (which is a title that reveals considerable ignorance about human genetics, and doesn't fairly represent the content of the submitted article). As I post this, the original article is not showing up to me by following the original link, but Google's cache
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
confirms the original article title.
I can bear with curators here changing article titles to original article titles (or to titles that condense original article titles to less than 90 characters, which is the hard-coded length limit here), but I sure would like an explanation of what a user is to do if it's possible to submit an article with EXACTLY the original article title (my usual practice) and then have the title changed to a stupid-looking title that is still under my screen name. If curators are going to do that kind of thing, they should at least sign their edits to take accountability for them. (That is the usual practice in another online forum where I have editing powers on other people's posts, where I use this same screen name I use here. If I edit someone's submission title, an edit trail identifies that I did that.)