As a researcher with many articles in the ACM library, I have to say this is a masterclass in hypocrisy. Obviously, lawyers can decipher the terms of ACM publishing contracts and Creative Commons licences to determine if this will be acceptable or not. But ACM is not a company, it's a non-profit founded in 1947 to represent scientists.
I would be surprised if a majority of ACM members were to say yes should we ask them (but ACM is not known for such democracy). Along with book authors, we are one of the many people that provide the knowledge and expertise on which large tech firms train their models, and get nothing in return. Actually, life is getting worse for us: extra workload in universities with students' AI use, a completely broken peer review system, etc. Hence the irony of ACM thinking about licensing, and only licensing, at a time where this is the least of our priorities.
If you don't hold a patent for the use of the knowledge you published publicly, you can't prevent others from using the knowledge. You enjoy the prestige attached to the idea that you're an academic who participates in giving away their knowledge but then you play this game when that knowledge would actually be useful as opposed to being read by 3 other people in your special area who sit on your various committees in your career, now you want to forbid the use for culture war intra-elite signaling reasons.
You don't own the knowledge you put out there unless you have a limited time valid patent. The rest is absurdity. If you want to keep your findings to yourself, keep them secret.
The intellectual property law that governs ACM articles is copyright law, not patents. I don’t know who controls these (the ACM or the authors) or what rights might have been granted to the public.
The entire point of copyright law is so that people can make their writing public and still be able to control the right to make copies (for example, into your dataset for training an LLM).
This makes no sense whatsoever. How would a philosopher of science, or a social scientist who publish in the ACM apply for a patent? Or someone who builds software (software patent not so easy to get ;)). I have applied for patents before and I'm pretty sure my patent application has been fed to countless LLMs by now.
The issue is not who owns knowledge, it's how it benefits humanity.
The world would be quite different if AI companies had to create the knowledge they trained on, rather than consume that knowledge freely given away. They're not known for freely giving away their produce either, I don't know why you think the ire should be pointing in this direction.
I like open models for sure. I support free software as well. But using published knowledge to solve new problems was never disallowed, even for profit. Today, a for-profit company, e.g. a gigantic Big Pharma company can have their employees read chemistry and biology papers and use the knowledge gained from it to improve their products and processes and make more profit without paying a cent to the authors (beyond what they may get - likely nothing - due to the potential paywall).
“If you don’t lock your bike, you can’t prevent others from taking it for a ride. You enjoy the mobility attached to the idea you’re a bike rider who rides a bike but then you play this game when that bike would actually be useful as opposed to sitting in the bike rack all day”.
The issue here is ACM focusing on licensing. A non profit would not be able to pay ACM for access. Hence why this policy is hypocritical: it gives more power to the larger players and undermines smaller actors in the field who have fewer resources.
As long as we are going toward a world of abundance where money doesn't mean much and the main currency is time, I can't complain. I will subsidize that with my brain power turned into ink on paper.
It seems that the "open access" is more marketing than something reality based they actually want to do.
https://dl.acm.org/openaccess ---> So how to access the content? Do I have to register or what? It the "open access" only for academic org's people or for everyone in the world?
https://dl.acm.org/ ---> Okay, nice simple search field without loggin in, but when you try to search something, you get thousands of results, even if you search specific author and the exact name of paper, you will get hundreds of results and the thing you want is buried somewhere on page 247. Filters of authors, years etc. are for Premium subscription. But just googling the thing finds the link to ACM... And want to get the actual PDF? Hope it says "free access"...
Google scholar has become the way to search papers (which is somewhat worrisome). What people want from there is a download for all the stuff that does not list an author copy. Open access IMHO is just a reaction to the fact that mostly you would not need a subscription anyhow. Now the authors are paying upfront or universities are paying flat for all their researchers. The problem is now the incentives are not increasing the number of subscriptions but increasing the number of papers published.
Since starting to use AIs seriously for search in the last 3 months I have read and referenced more published papers and academic primary sources then I think I did in the previous 5 years. They're fantastic for pointing at some claim and asking for the primary source for it, and then it does the work of following things through the layers of backref to the original, assuming it's online. Opening the library up to AI access makes it far more accessible and usable then it was before.
AIs, at least in their current form, make you more who ever you were. If you want snap, glib answers of dubious accuracy, they'll give them to you, more easily than ever before. If you want to dig back into primary sources and get the original content, they'll do that for you, more easily than ever before.
Can't speak to how the science infrastructure is going to handle them, but if it takes down the peer review system, which I think has been worthless for probably going on two decades and has just given the entire enterprise a false sense of assurance, it'll probably be a net gain in the end. Peer review is a source of more problems then it is solving right now.
TLDR: “we’re going to try to get money from LLM providers for access to our back catalog without getting permission from the authors or providing them with any share of the revenue”.
I don't want to be mean but if it's that hard to even recognize that LLMs are even a valid thing that could intersect with your business that you need some kind of campaign for it..
It's almost like, "don't hurt yourself unc, we will just search arxiv".
I would be surprised if a majority of ACM members were to say yes should we ask them (but ACM is not known for such democracy). Along with book authors, we are one of the many people that provide the knowledge and expertise on which large tech firms train their models, and get nothing in return. Actually, life is getting worse for us: extra workload in universities with students' AI use, a completely broken peer review system, etc. Hence the irony of ACM thinking about licensing, and only licensing, at a time where this is the least of our priorities.
You don't own the knowledge you put out there unless you have a limited time valid patent. The rest is absurdity. If you want to keep your findings to yourself, keep them secret.
The entire point of copyright law is so that people can make their writing public and still be able to control the right to make copies (for example, into your dataset for training an LLM).
The issue is not who owns knowledge, it's how it benefits humanity.
Sorry to ruin your day, but if the people with money could have introduce equal society, you would have noticed their attempts by now.
https://dl.acm.org/openaccess ---> So how to access the content? Do I have to register or what? It the "open access" only for academic org's people or for everyone in the world?
https://dl.acm.org/ ---> Okay, nice simple search field without loggin in, but when you try to search something, you get thousands of results, even if you search specific author and the exact name of paper, you will get hundreds of results and the thing you want is buried somewhere on page 247. Filters of authors, years etc. are for Premium subscription. But just googling the thing finds the link to ACM... And want to get the actual PDF? Hope it says "free access"...
Google scholar has become the way to search papers (which is somewhat worrisome). What people want from there is a download for all the stuff that does not list an author copy. Open access IMHO is just a reaction to the fact that mostly you would not need a subscription anyhow. Now the authors are paying upfront or universities are paying flat for all their researchers. The problem is now the incentives are not increasing the number of subscriptions but increasing the number of papers published.
https://authors.acm.org/open-access/acm-open-for-authors-hom...
A llm emulating a person is why many of my used sites banned llms due to scraping bandwith costs
Is this about access or accessibility to claude (for example)
I am sure the entirely of human computing knowledge is not that big.
I think the right choice is pretty clear...
What about the authors?
I suppose they could be sued.
now it will be fodder for the slop machine
(i think that LLMs are going to wreck the peer review system for all but hard-experimental papers)
AIs, at least in their current form, make you more who ever you were. If you want snap, glib answers of dubious accuracy, they'll give them to you, more easily than ever before. If you want to dig back into primary sources and get the original content, they'll do that for you, more easily than ever before.
Can't speak to how the science infrastructure is going to handle them, but if it takes down the peer review system, which I think has been worthless for probably going on two decades and has just given the entire enterprise a false sense of assurance, it'll probably be a net gain in the end. Peer review is a source of more problems then it is solving right now.
> Beginning January 2026, all ACM publications and related artifacts in the ACM Digital Library will be made open access.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46313991
It's almost like, "don't hurt yourself unc, we will just search arxiv".