Nonmembers can purchase short-term licenses. Conferences will continue to expand. Some of them will be conducted in the Internet. ACM will offer reading and discussion programs based on collections from the database. It is becoming a standard practice among engineers and scientists to post copies of their papers on servers attached to the Internet and maintained by their employers.
Readers can attach comments to the posted versions, and authors can post revised copies.
These practices are widely seen among authors as means to speed the distribution of findings and to improve the quality of papers and algorithms. The new practice of links-use is widely seen by authors as a means to constructing multimedia, nonlinear documents that incorporate by reference relevant works from anywhere in the world. In other words, the link is seen as a citation and a copy of the work is obtained upon an explicit request by the reader. These new practices are bringing authors and readers into conflict over copyright laws. Authors maintain that links are citations and it is the responsibility of the copyright owner to demand permission when a reader uses the link.