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This kind of attitude is detrimental to the overall progress and improvement of ethics in general. Insisting on absolute ideological purity before a person or g

This kind of attitude is detrimental to the overall progress and improvement of ethics in general. Insisting on absolute ideological purity before a person or group is "allowed" (or "in a position to") make any comment on ethics is both hopelessly unrealistic and deeply counterproductive. Yes, there are ethical stances, and records of conduct, that are so egregious they call into question anything else someone says—but to say that the ACM is "in no position" to call for improved ethics in AI and a move away from surveillance capitalism because of a completely unrelated objection you have to their conduct regarding copyright does no one any service. Call out their bad behavior, yes—but when they say something that's genuinely positive, acknowledge that. Reward behavior you would like to see repeated, even if it isn't absolutely everything you want or responding to your personal pet peeve.

YesThatTom2 5y ago
ACM is moving to an open publishing model. acmQUEUE is open. (Not speaking for ACM)
- kragen 5y ago
  I hope so. They own the copyright to a huge amount of their published material, which as adrian_b points out above includes most of the important historical record of the computing field. If they move to an open publishing model, they'd relicense it under Creative Commons Attribution or Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike (CC-BY or CC-BY-SA), which would be an enormous contribution. However, as far as I know, this isn't even being discussed within the ACM leadership or membership.
kragen 5y ago
You may be right. Certainly purity spirals are enormously caustic. However, I don't think the copyright problem is completely unrelated to the problem of surveillance capitalism. Elsevier's excuse for embedding tracking cookies in their papers is copyright, and the main thing preventing competitors to YouTube from popping up is also copyright. Google's primary excuse for scanning users' cloud files without their permission is also copyright, although they also have kiddie porn, which is Apple's excuse. Copyright is the excuse for the DRM in Amazon's ebooks, Netflix's movies, and XBox games, all of which form extremely powerful surveillance-capitalism platforms—in large part because the users are prohibited from disabling the surveillance functionality. Copyright is a powerful centralizing force in the software industry; without copyright, ex-Google and ex-Fecebutt employees would have a much easier time founding companies to compete with Google and Fecebutt, which would enable users to choose trustworthy companies instead of companies with government-granted monopolies on the software their employees wrote. So I think copyright and surveillance capitalism are deeply intertwined, though the ACM is not itself using copyright for surveillance, to my knowledge.

YesThatTom2 5y ago

ACM is moving to an open publishing model. acmQUEUE is open. (Not speaking for ACM)

kragen 5y ago
I hope so. They own the copyright to a huge amount of their published material, which as adrian_b points out above includes most of the important historical record of the computing field. If they move to an open publishing model, they'd relicense it under Creative Commons Attribution or Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike (CC-BY or CC-BY-SA), which would be an enormous contribution. However, as far as I know, this isn't even being discussed within the ACM leadership or membership.

kragen 5y ago

You may be right. Certainly purity spirals are enormously caustic. However, I don't think the copyright problem is completely unrelated to the problem of surveillance capitalism. Elsevier's excuse for embedding tracking cookies in their papers is copyright, and the main thing preventing competitors to YouTube from popping up is also copyright. Google's primary excuse for scanning users' cloud files without their permission is also copyright, although they also have kiddie porn, which is Apple's excuse. Copyright is the excuse for the DRM in Amazon's ebooks, Netflix's movies, and XBox games, all of which form extremely powerful surveillance-capitalism platforms—in large part because the users are prohibited from disabling the surveillance functionality. Copyright is a powerful centralizing force in the software industry; without copyright, ex-Google and ex-Fecebutt employees would have a much easier time founding companies to compete with Google and Fecebutt, which would enable users to choose trustworthy companies instead of companies with government-granted monopolies on the software their employees wrote. So I think copyright and surveillance capitalism are deeply intertwined, though the ACM is not itself using copyright for surveillance, to my knowledge.