So it would appear the firmware has a header of 0x400 which is buffered during upload but discarded if the firmware fails the checksum at the end of the upload.
For new OA publications at conferences/journals, authors get a choice of CC licenses [1,2]. The respective licenses can be found in an article's [3] "Information" sidebar (hidden by default) or the HTML/PDF version [4].
Unfortunately, the licenses are apparently not shown more prominently in the ACM Digital Library. The search function does not allow filtering by license either.
For CACM articles, the traditional ACM copyright notice seems to apply [5] (maybe there are CC-licensed articles, but I did not see any so far):
"Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author."
For pre-OA publications (< ~2020 ?), authors could either transfer copyright or give ACM a publishing license [3].
I'd assume that ACM may assign an arbitrary CC license to publications to which they own the copyright but not to ones for which they only have publishing rights. Given that authors only licensed publishing rights for the final article to ACM, I'd guess the only acceptable CC license in this case would be CC-BY-ND.
However, I guess that ACM won't want to go through the trouble of assigning CC licenses to older publications.
EDIT:
My tentative guesses/answers to your questions would be:
> - how effectively libraries' rights to archive, copy, and redistribute works published in cacm is protected;
IIRC, libraries subscribing to ACM's DL already have the right to archive the content. Given that many authors have only given ACM the right to distribute their works, I'm not sure whether scraping OA articles is allowed. (ACM has been banning IP ranges for mass-downloading papers in the past, so be careful.)
> - whether the license is compatible with incorporation of text into wikipedia and stack overflow; and
IMHO, only if a non-ND CC license was applied to the article. Also, correct attribution is still needed [7].
> - to what extent volunteer translations into languages such as chinese and spanish can be legally archived, copied, and redistributed
Again, probably only for explicitly CC-licensed content (excluding -ND).
thanks, this is great information! it's good to see that in the "information" sidebar (visible by clicking the circled i icon at the top of the right toolbar) they've removed the language about redistributing to lists or posting on servers. but "commercial advantage", especially now that they've removed "direct", seems like it could pose a lot of risks
in the united states today, universities can no longer take advantage of the research exemption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_exemption to patents because madey v. duke held that, by using madey's patented invention for research purposes, duke was 'increas[ing] the status of the institution and lur[ing] lucrative research grants', so a sneaky lawyer hired by a hypothetical future cacm administration could argue that things like archiving the cacm articles in a university library could produce 'commercial advantage' for the university, so it would be nice to have the acm using language that protects users' rights more solidly
also, i feel like having the notice hidden by default makes it unnecessarily difficult to comply with, since the notice requires that copies 'bear this notice (...) on the first page'. unlike older cacm publications, the pdf of that article produced by the acm also doesn't bear the notice on the first page, or in fact anywhere, so you have to modify the pdf to be able to copy it in compliance with the conditions of the notice
cc-by-nd or similar licenses are clearly not compliant with the definition of 'open access' in the berlin declaration. you may be correct that acm doesn't have the legal ability to license the creation of derivative works of older articles unless the author or other copyright holder had transferred copyright to the acm. that would make those older articles not open access, and obtaining the necessary licenses might be logistically infeasible at this point by any measure short of drastically reducing the term of copyright through legislation
so it seems like the acm is improving the situation considerably, but there's still a long way to go
AFAIK, licensing agreements between libraries and digital publishers typically include a right to perpetual access to articles in a journal or digital library they subscribe to. Any papers published while the licensing agreement is in place are to be made available even if the library cancels their subscription.
This also includes the right to make backup copies of the digital library.
What the library is allowed to do with this backup probably depends on country-specific laws.
However, if I understand the current situation correctly, ACM allows everyone to download CACM articles but not to redistribute them, right?
In theory, they could also explicitly allow anyone to redistribute all of their publications (they reserve the right to do this in the licensing agreement with authors).
However, I'd argue that it is not in ACMs interest to do so - and probably not in mine, either. Having a central, trustworthy source has benefits - e.g. when retracting papers.
I'm fine with the ACM DL being free to use and having library backups as safety nets if ACM ever goes under.
it's definitely in acm's interest to do so if they want to claim they're 'open access', and it's in your interest too
i agree that it's beneficial to have a central, trustworthy source. if redistributing cacm articles is clearly legal, and the acm goes under, you'll get them from the internet archive, wikisource, project gutenberg, google's new historical acm article archive, or some similar institution. if redistributing cacm articles is not clearly legal, you'll have to get them from library genesis, sci-hub, or the pirate bay, with the associated risks of incorrect contents—but only until those get shut down following a change of government
well, maybe you personally won't, because you have a position at a university, and you can easily just use its library. but the people you'd like to have as your students 20 years from now, people who are now living here in argentina or in ukraine or egypt, will have to get them from there
an additional issue is that, in many cases, the 'central trustworthy source' does a really bad job of scanning paper documents: they use bilevel scanning for photographs (sometimes even color photographs), scan at very low resolution, chop off the pages, and so forth. i run into these constantly; https://www.nasa.gov/history/alsj/a17/A17_LunarRover2.html is probably the most recent example. although allowing other people to scan their copies and distribute the scans does not ensure that they will correct this problem, prohibiting them from doing so reduces the chances further
analogous remarks apply to translation
and that's why the berlin declaration enshrines the right for readers to redistribute works and derivative works as central to open access
IIRC, he always said that any OA model for ACM requires careful thinking about a sustainable business model.
In 2009 he argued [1]:
> "Indeed, the idea of unfettered access to scientific knowledge naturally resonates with many researchers, including me. So why doesn’t ACM become an open-access publisher? [...] ACM operates as a democratic association. If you believe that ACM should change its publishing business model, then you should lobby for this position.
[...]
The second issue is the business model of association publishing, for example, "reader pays" vs. "authors pays."
This is a legitimate topic of discussion, as long as we understand that it cannot be separated from the overall business model of the association. Just remember, "free" is not a sound business model."
In 2018 he wrote [2]:
> "If we are serious about open access, then we must discuss its underlying business model. Let’s get serious about open access!"
No. ACM has been on a slow path towards making everything Open Access for many years now - driven both by internal and external feedback. Given that the ACM Digital Library (individual and library subscriptions) has been subsidizing other ACM endeavors, that making stuff OA is not something you can take back later, and that the required article processing charges (APCs) cause other problems, they have been rather careful with the transition.
They plan to make the entire digital library freely accessible by January 1, 2026.
I'm interested in understanding how the ACM is handling the transition to Open Access, particularly given that they offer a lifetime add-on to their life membership option. How are they addressing potential pushback from individuals who have already paid a significant amount to access the Digital Library? Are they considering making a portion of the Digital Library exclusive to paid subscribers even after the transition to Open Access?
Note that LIPICs [1] publishes the conference ECOOP chaired by Jonathan Aldrich. It is a very interesting alternative to ACM for conference proceedings: it hosts some great conferences and it has lower APCs. It does not publish journals though.
> Many lawyers believe all that matters is whether the output of the model is infringing.
What I don't understand (as a European with little knowledge of court decisions on fair use): with the same reasoning you might make software piracy a case of 'fair use', no?
You take stuff someone else wrote - without their consent - and use it to create something new. The output (e.g. the artwork you create with Photoshop) is definitely not copyrighted by the manufacturer of the software.
But in the case of software piracy, it is not about the output. With software, it seems clear that the act of taking something you do not have the rights for and using it for personal (financial) gain is not covered by fair use.
Why can OpenAI steal copyrighted content to create transformative works but I cannot steal Photoshop to create transformative works?
What am I missing?
That's not a good example. Making a copy of a record you own(as an example ripping a audio CD to MP3) is absolutely fair use. Giving your video game to your neighbor to play - that's also fair use.
Fair use is limited when it comes to transformative/derivative work. Similar laws are in place all over the world, just in US some of those come from case law.
> With software, it seems clear that the act of taking something you do not have the rights for and using it for personal (financial) gain is not covered by fair use.
> Why can OpenAI steal copyrighted content to create transformative works but I cannot steal Photoshop to create transformative works?
That's not a good analogy. The argument, that is not settled yet, is that a model doesn't contain enough copyrightable material to produce an infringing output.
Take your software example - you legally acquire Civ6, you play Civ6, you learn the concepts and the visuals of Civ6... then you take that knowledge and create a game that is similar to Civ6. If you're a copyright maximalist - then you would say that creating any games that mimic Civ6 by people who have played Civ6 is copyright infringement. Legally there are definitely lower limits to copyright - like no one owns the copyright to the phrase "Once upon a time", but there may be a copyright on "In a galaxy far far away".
> Why can OpenAI steal copyrighted content to create transformative works but I cannot steal Photoshop to create transformative works? What am I missing?
If Photoshop was hosted online by Adobe, you would be free to do so. It's copyrighted, but you'd have an implied license to use it by the fact it's being made available to you to download. Same reason search engines can save and present cached snapshots of a website (Field v. Google).
In other situations (e.g: downloading from an unofficial source) you're right that private copying is (in the US) still prima facie copyright infringement. However, when considering a fair use defense, courts do take the distinction into strong consideration: "verbatim intermediate copying has consistently been upheld as fair use if the copy is ‘not reveal[ed] . . . to the public.’" (Authors Guild v. Google)
If you were using Photoshop in some transformative way that gives it new purpose (e.g: documenting the evolution of software UIs, rather than just making a photo with it as designed) then you may* be able to get away with downloading it from unofficial sources via a fair use defense.
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