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FOS Newsletter, 3/25/02
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Peter Suber
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Mar 25, 2002 11:00 PST
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Welcome to the Free Online Scholarship (FOS) Newsletter
March 25, 2002
Article summarizing software
In the last issue, I asked for examples of text summarizing software
applied to scholarly content. I got these helpful leads in reply.
Cornell University's Big Ear is software that reads a half-dozen
law-related mailing lists. It doesn't summarize the discussions, but it
does notice when a posting announces a new document, web site, or
product. Big Ear then extracts the announcement and posts it to its own
list of such announcements. The result is tightly focused list of
announcements of interest to wired lawyers.
http://barratry.law.cornell.edu:5123/notify/buzz.html
(Thanks to Steven Perkins.)
There are many free and commercial text-summarizing programs. Extractor,
however, is the only one I've seen that puts a button on your browser's
toolbar. Surf to an online essay and click the button. You get a list of
keywords from the essay and links to deeper analysis. Click for more and
you get a bulleted list of the essay's major propositions and radio buttons
to instruct the software on which keywords are more central than
others. The software will also recommend similar articles (through an
Alta Vista search on Extractor's keyword list), translate it to or from
five languages (through Alta Vista's BabelFish), or read the text aloud (by
running it through Bell Labs' text-to-speech software [FOSN for 10/5/01]
and streaming the result to the Windows Media Player). Extractor is
produced by the National Research Council of Canada.
http://extractor.iit.nrc.ca/
(Thanks to Stephen Downes.)
Pertinence is text summarizing software with a free web-based demo. Give
it some text (by local filename, by URL, or by cutting/pasting into a web
form) and it will mark every sentence in a different shade of blue,
according to the importance or centrality of the sentence within the
essay. The darker the blue, the more important. You can ask to see the
top 10% of sentences by importance, the top 20%, and so on down to the full
100%. In my trial run, Extractor did a better job than Pertinence in
finding the central propositions of one of my online essays. (Free
registration required.)
http://www.pertinence.net/index_en.html
(Thanks to Joshua Schachter.)
Péter Jacsó's column in the February _Information Today_ reviews several
free and affordable text summarizing programs. This is especially helpful
because the other reviews and collections I found online were out of date.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?J12C52D8
my.OAI, a new search engine for OAI-compliant archives, promises automatic
text summaries in a future release. See the my.OAI story below, under
Developments.
http://www.myoai.com/
----------
Internet filtering and online scholarship
Internet filters are relevant to FOS because they limit the content that
users can find and read, even if the content exists freely online. There
are two big filtering stories this week: the release of the ICRAfilter and
the opening day of the CIPA trial.
* The Internet Content Ratings Association (ICRA) is a new approach to
internet filtering or censorware. Traditional filtering software consults
a list of taboo sites. The ICRA software consults descriptive tags
embedded in a site's HTML code. Site authors insert their own
tags. ICRAfilter users decide which tags should trigger blocking action.
ICRA is proud of the fact that the site tags are voluntary rather than
compulsory, chosen by authors rather than imposed by censors, and neutral
descriptions rather than moral judgments. This is a step forward, and if
it works this way, it will be an advance on filters that consult blacklists
using unknown criteria or known criteria crudely implemented.
Are there any worries? Seth Finkelstein points out that movie ratings
started out as voluntary and self-imposed but have become
quasi-governmental edicts in some countries and outright government edicts
in others.
I worry that the site author is only one party whose voluntariness
matters. The other party is the surfer. I don't object strongly when
parents clamp filters on the browsers of their young children. But when
students, employees, and patrons of public libraries are forced to use
filters imposed by schools, employers, or governments, that is censorship
and it cannot be defended by calling it voluntary.
Karen Schneider, editor of the Librarians' Index to the Internet, put it
this way: parents who want filters for their children "never want to stop
there, they want to have it in libraries and schools, they want to have it
for other people."
We know that many public schools in the U.S. already use web filters
produced by the Religious Right (FOSN for 3/18/02). What would improve if
they switched to the ICRA method? If the same school administrators who
bought the blacklists produced by the Religious Right configured the
ICRAfilter, nothing of importance would change. Students would be
involuntarily blocked from sites that were voluntarily labelled.
ICRA has gathered $1.15 million from the European Union and endorsements
from Microsoft, AOL, IBM, Yahoo, and many other major tech firms.
General coverage of the ICRAfilter launch
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-865555.html
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-866363.html
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51252,00.html
Seth Finkelstein's critique
http://sethf.com/essays/ratings/icra-round2.php
(Thanks to C-FIT.)
ICRA press release
http://www.icra.org/en_latest.html
ICRA home page
http://www.icra.org
* The U.S. Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) requires libraries
receiving federal funds to use web filters on machines accessible to the
public (see FOSN for 10/5/01, 11/2/01). The ACLU has challenged its
constitutionality on First Amendment grounds, and the case goes to trial today.
The CIPA is in court because makers of censorware and blacklists want to
block all content of a certain kind: illegal obscenity plus anything else
that is "harmful to children". The only way to do so is to err on the side
of overbreadth. On the other side, grown ups and the First Amendment
demand that no lawful or harmless content be blocked, which requires erring
on the side of underbreadth. There won't be a solution that pleases
everyone until filters can perfectly block all and only unlawful and
harmful content. But we know that will never happen, because the set of
blocked sites is precise while the categories of illegal and harmful
content are inherently fuzzy and contested.
Let me elaborate on this point for a second. We can never prove the
congruity of a precise set with a fuzzy and contested one. That's why we
can't prove the congruity of politicians elected and politicians worthy of
election, dollars spent and value gained, or degrees earned and wisdom
learned. (Academic digression: this is also why we can't prove the
congruity of the set of Turing-computable functions and the set of
effective methods, and hence why accept the indemonstrability of the
Church-Turing Thesis.)
If the advertising promise of the filtering industry is that technical
advances or voluntary labels will enable us to attain congruity between the
set of blocked sites and the set of illegal obscenity and content harmful
to minors, then it is hallucinatory. Users would be deceived and
manufacturers would be deceivers, unless they were both guilty of
self-deception.
The ICRA approach doesn't solve this problem at all. It lets users make
the overbreadth/underbreadth decision themselves, which is a step
forward. But this step forward only applies to users who configure the
software for themselves, not users for whom configuration decisions are
made by others (children, students, employees, library patrons).
Just as mathematicians admit the indemonstrability of the Church-Turing
Thesis and move on, let's admit the unattainability of perfect blocking and
discuss the issues we then face: whether to err on the side of overbreadth
or underbreadth, and how to make filtering voluntary for every surfer
beyond infancy. The CIPA trial should settle the first question. We
haven't yet started to address the second.
The CIPA trial starts today
http://www.aclu.org/features/f032001a.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/25/national/25LIBR.html
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-000021535mar25.story
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/2929639.htm
----------
Censoring search engines
The Church of Scientology (CoS) believes that many pages hosted at Xena.net
violate its copyright. In addition to pursuing Xena.net directly, the CoS
asked Google to stop returning links to those pages in searches. Google
complied. The DMCA shields web sites from liability for hosting or linking
to infringing sites, but only if they remove them promptly when
notified. The legal pressure on Google to comply arose both from the DMCA
requirement of promptness, eliminating the opportunity to ascertain whether
a real infringement had occurred, and the DeCSS precedent (FOSN for
12/5/01), which prohibits links to infringing content just as much as
infringement itself.
Google has a procedure to reinstate links deleted in this way, but it can
only be applied after the content is blocked and for some its complexity
may require the assistance of a lawyer. Other search engines face the same
pressures and respond in essentially the same way. The problem lies with
the DMCA, not with Google.
Here's one reason why this case is relevant to online scholarship. The
DMCA creates pressures that distort search engine return lists. It's one
thing when their omissions corresponded to illegal content. But this case
shows that many omissions correspond to nothing more than lawyers'
threatening letters. Insofar as search engines make sites visible, the
DMCA has given copyright holders a veto on a site's visibility, a veto they
can apply without going to court and proving infringement.
Some online critics are saying that the CoS is merely suppressing
criticism, not enforcing its copyrights. It's true Xenu is a critic of
scientology, and it's also true that scientologists have a history of
trying to silence critics through copyright lawsuits. But in fact the
author behind Xenu, Andreas Heldal-Lund, admits that he has put full texts
from the CoS online. His reason is to reveal the nature of scientology in
a way that cannot be accused of quoting out of context.
Xenu's pages are still online; most are simply not listed in the Google
index. Moreover, the CoS has not yet proved any copyright
infringement. Here's another way to see why the case is relevant to online
scholarship: given these facts, Google was guilty of nothing more than
accuracy in showing which sites were online and relevant to certain
queries. The DeCSS case showed that accurate linking can violate the DMCA;
now we know that an accurate search index can also violate the DMCA, or at
least that lawyers can cite the DMCA when threatening a lawsuit to prevent
accuracy. Accuracy has become an offense.
General coverage of the story
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-865936.html
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-866574.html
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2107088,00.html
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51233,00.html
http://www.microcontentnews.com/articles/googlechurch.htm
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/24533.html
http://www.dailyrotten.com/articles/archive/290725.html
How the scientologists got one of Xenu's upstream providers kicked off its ISP
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-866656.html
Heldal-Lund will not challenge the Google action because it would subject
him to U.S. jurisdiction
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2107262,00.html
Xenu.net home page
http://www.xenu.net/
(Some friends of Xenu are "Google bombing" by linking to the site in order
to cause its Google page rank to rise.)
Google's letter to Xenu.net
http://xenu.net/news/20020320-google.txt
(Contains (1) a Google admission that it faced DMCA liability "regardless
of [the] merits" of the CoS complaint, (2) an outline of the procedure
Heldal-Lund would have to follow to reinstate his links in Google's index,
and (3) a list of the offensive URLs, in case you want to read what the CoS
doesn't want you to read.)
Dave Touretzky's template for responding to an ISP that deletes your
content because it was threatened with DMCA liability
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Terrorism/form-letter.html
(Thanks to C-FIT.)
* Postscript. The CoS could have avoided the bad press of objecting to
Google's accuracy in pointing to online content relevant to
scientology. All it had to do was go to court, prove infringement, and use
the verdict to force the infringing pages from the web. Then Google's
active links would disappear and, if any threat was needed, it would only
apply to the Google cache. CoS may have worried that a copyright lawsuit
would increase Xenu traffic, just as suing for defamation publicizes the
defamation. This worry may have been justified, but it ignores two
facts. First, once CoS had a verdict in its favor, curious readers would
find it much more difficult (though not impossible) to read the infringing
pages. Second, infringement is a routine, low-profile news story, while
censoring Google is big. It's as if the CoS legal department were more
concerned to show the need to amend the DMCA than to protect church secrets.
----------
Developments
* François Schiettecatte has created my.OAI, a new search engine for
OAI-compliant archives. It doesn't cover all OAI archives, but will cover
any combination of seven major ones. It includes a flexible web form to
limit a search to given metadata fields, dates, or archives. Registered
users can set preferences, store documents in customized folders, and store
any search for reuse. A future version will offer automatic text summaries
and links to similar documents. The search engine is online and working,
though not all the functions are fully implemented yet. Schiettecatte
welcomes comments and suggestions from users as he finishes coding the
feature set.
http://www.myoai.com/
* The British Library announces that over 100 publishers have agreed to
deposit their electronic publications in its repository to promote their
long-term preservation. The archive now contains over 800 ebooks and 850
ejournals. Currently publisher deposits are voluntary, but the UK
Department of Culture, Media and Sport is using the experience to refine
legislation to make future deposits compulsory. Rules about who can access
the archive and on what terms are still being worked out.
http://www.bl.uk/cgi-bin/press.cgi?story=1229
* SPARC has announced its partnership with the _Journal of Vegetation
Science_ (JVS). JVS was the first journal I know of to "declare
independence" from a commercial publisher on the ground that its
subscription price was exorbitant (FOSN for 11/2/01, 11/9/01). Its editors
left Kluwer's _Vegetatio_ in 1989 and launched JVS at an affordable price
with Opulus Press. JVS now exceeds Vegetatio in impact factor, at nearly
one-seventh the price. The new partnership with SPARC will widen its
subscription base among libraries worldwide.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?X4872139
Details on the JVS and other journal "declarations of independence"
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/lists.htm#declarations
* Wolters Kluwer has announced its intention to sell Kluwer Academic
Publishers, its scientific publishing division. It could go for 400-500
million Euro. Stock analysts welcomed the announcement. (PS: Why was
this good news to stock analysts? Is it because the scientific
publications were losing money? If so, is the reason related to the rising
competition from free and affordable journals? See the JVS story above.)
http://www.ananova.com/business/story/sm_548427.html?menu=business.latestheadlines
(Thanks to LibLicense.)
Kluwer's press release (PS: The public reason for the sale is to allow
Wolters to focus on medical publications. But it doesn't seem that
profitable scientific publications would be a distraction from this focus.)
http://www.wkap.nl/prod/a/newsaboutkluwer
* The International Consortium for the Advancement of Academic Publishing
(ICAAP) has announced its prices for designing, managing, preparing and
hosting electronic journals. After the initial setup fee, the price is
$400/year, and $30/article for markup (Canadian dollars). Compare these
prices, for example, to services charging $500/article. ICAAP believes its
prices are low enough to create an alternative to expensive commercial
presses and to allow editors to make their journals free or affordable for
readers. ICAAP also announces that it now offers similar services for
print journals.
http://www.icaap.org/icaapcosts.html
(Full disclosure: I'm on the ICAAP board, but ICAAP is a non-profit
organization and I have no financial interest in it.)
* Next month _Science_ magazine plans to publish the genome sequence for
rice, as deciphered by Syngenta. But the journal will not require that the
underlying data be publicly accessible. This has triggered a letter of
protest from 20 prominent genome scientists, including two Nobel
laureates. Their letter argues that "accepted norms of the field" require
data to be accessible in public domain databases. The concern is that the
genetic data on rice, the most important food plant in the developing
world, will be privately owned. Quoting Alex Wijeratna for
ActionAid: "The corporations are leading a charge to privatise the staple
crops. There could be serious implications for poor farmers in developing
countries."
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992061
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1879000/1879346.stm
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=275756
http://makeashorterlink.com/?Z4A31239
* DNA patents are difficult to obtain and only last 17 years. But what if
a DNA sequence were coded as music and then copyrighted? Not only are
copyrights easier to obtain than patents (they are essentially automatic),
thanks to Mickey Mouse they can last more than five times longer than
patents. Maxygen is exploring the possibility of locking up its genomic
discoveries in copyrighted music, distributing them as MP3 files, and
selling software to convert the music files back to readable data. Facts
cannot be copyrighted, so any independent discoverer of the same DNA
sequence would be free to exploit it. But the music files could be
copyrighted and to that extent protected against illegal copying during
distribution. Purchasers of the decoding software would have an interest
in keeping the decoded data to themselves. (PS: Of course all data are
convertible to music, just as all are convertible to texts or
images. While the Maxygen plan seems to be about evasive legal scheming at
its worst, it points out a way that algorithms can collapse an important
part of the distinction between patents and copyrights. I suspect it will
therefore trigger a change in the law. But I worry whenever legislators
nowadays start revising IP law.)
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=277097
* The 2002 EPPIE awards for (commercial) electronic publishing have been
announced.
http://www.epicauthors.org/index.phtml?document=eppies
* Ingenta has been named one of the 100 most visionary companies in the UK.
http://www.managinginformation.com/news/content_show_full.php?id=425
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2002/03/21/Vision.pdf
* Wisconsin has repealed a 130 year old statute requiring public libraries
in the state to offer their services to patrons free of charge. It doesn't
require libraries to charge fees, but it allows them to do so if they wish.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/mar02/28740.asp
(Thanks to LIS News.)
----------
New on the net
* David Rumsey, a private collector, is putting his collection of 150,000
rare 18th and 19th century maps online for all to use free of charge.
http://www.davidrumsey.com/
(Thanks to El.pub Weekly.)
* Oxford Reference Online has now launched. It will eventually contain 100
of Oxford's full-text reference texts (over 130 million words), but has
only a portion of that online today. Individual users must pay $250/year
for access, the same price as schools.
http://www.researchbuzz.com/articles/2002/oxfordreference0320.html
(Thanks to Research Buzz.)
Oxford Reference Online
http://www.oxfordreference.com/
* OCLC has released SiteSearch, open source software to manage distributed
library content on the web. The Java code is now available for
downloading, for non-commercial users only.
http://www.sitesearch.oclc.org/projects/ssbasecode/
* The UK's ubiquitous Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has
launched an online magazine, _JISC inform_, to help us keep track of its
many FOS projects and other initiatives. The new magazine replaces _JISC
News_. The first issue contains stories on RDN, digital preservation, and
the research grid. (Separate stories do not have separate URLs.)
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/pub02/inform1.pdf
----------
Share your thoughts
* The Resources Discovery Network has created an online survey on the
features users would like to see in academic subject portals. It will
accept responses until April 12.
http://www.mathgate.bham.ac.uk/mathsportal/sppsurvey.asp
(Thanks to the Manchester Metropolitan University Library.)
* The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing last week on the SSSCA
(FOSN for 3/18/02), now called the CBDTPA. Its web site has a form for
citizen comments on the issues. A 3/18 posting to LibLicense pointed out
that none of the comments raised library or fair-use issues. The number of
comments has grown significantly since then, but the observation still
seems to hold. Moreover, I haven't seen any comment raise scientific or
scholarly research issues. Let the committee know your thoughts.
http://judiciary.senate.gov/special/feature.cfm
* If you would like to comment on President Bush's plan to secure
cyberspace, then take the government-commissioned survey created by the
SANS Institute. Responses will be accepted until April 20.
http://www.sans.org/nationalstrategy.php
(Thanks to C-FIT.)
----------
In other publications
* In the March 22 _News.com_, Lisa Bowman interviews Joe Kraus, founder of
the anti-DMCA, anti-SSSCA, anti-CBDTPA DigitalConsumer.com (see FOSN for
3/18/02). Quoting Kraus: "I happen to believe that we are entering a
world where the personal-use rights [to make certain kinds of copy] that
consumers have are being taken away by media companies under the guise of
preventing illegal copying, but [in] reality [companies are] trying to
establish new business models."
http://news.com.com/2008-1082-866516.html
* In the March 21 _SearchDay_, Chris Sherman evaluates FindArticles, a free
database of full-text articles from journals and magazines. What sets it
apart is that it offers free online access to articles that may not be
available from the home sites of the original journals and
magazines. (PS: This is a great advantage, but it's not clear how
FindArticles does it. If it has licensed the content for free distribution
from the original periodical, then why doesn't the original periodical
offer free access to the same content?)
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/02/sd0321-findarticles.html
* In the March 21 _Free Pint_, Paul Harwood asks whether scholarly
publishing is undergoing evolution or revolution. He outlines the
interests of publishers, subscription agents, and librarians, and describes
a good number of the recent FOS initiatives. Although Harwood is a
Regional Director for Swets Blackwell, he admits that he finds Stevan
Harnad's FOS arguments persuasive. In the end he concludes that deep
change is occurring, and that "a revolution cannot be discounted".
http://www.freepint.com/issues/210302.htm#feature
(Thanks to Gary Price's VASND.)
* In the March issue of _Syllabus_, I have an article on Noesis, software
for searching and organizing online content that I am developing with a
partner. The last section of the article shows how the software will serve
the FOS movement.
http://www.syllabus.com/syllabusmagazine/article.asp?id=6133
* The March issue of _D-Lib Magazine_ is now online. The theme for this
issue is Digital Technologies and Indigenous Communities. In addition to
the theme articles, FOSN readers will be interested in the following short
notes.
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march02/03contents.html
Y. Kathy Kwan, LinkOut --Explore beyond PubMed and Entrez
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march02/03inbrief.html#KWAN
Kat Hagedorn, Launch of OAIster Project
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march02/03inbrief.html#HAGEDORN
Christine Lafon, Physicists Gain Online Research Tool That Will Save
Thousands of Hours Yearly [namely, the NASA Astrophysics Data System]
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march02/03inbrief.html#LAFON
* The first 2002 issue of the _Journal of Information Law and Technology_
is now online. The following articles might be of interest to FOSN readers.
http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/02-1/
Debra Tuomey, Weathering the Commercial Storm: Why Everyone Should Steer
Clear of UCITA
http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/02-1/tuomey.html
Fernando Galindo, A Code of Practice for the Globalisation of Electronic
Commerce and Government
http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/02-1/galindo.html
Lee Marshall has a long letter to the editor endorsing the WIPOUT alternate
essay contest (see FOSN for 9/6/01, 1/30/02)
http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/news.html
* In a recent but undated article in _AtNewYork_, Erin Joyce reports on the
state of the debate whether online newspapers, magazines, greeting cards,
and other non-academic content should be free or priced. This would not
normally be relevant to FOS. But the article includes this obviously true,
and transferable, quotation from Charlie Fink, president of
AmericanGreetings.com: "One of the metrics that's going to judge [sic]
whether or not your business can charge for content is how free are the
alternatives. The free alternatives in your category are going to
dramatically affect your ability to control pricing."
http://www.atnewyork.com/news/article/0,1471,8471_994361,00.html
----------
Following up
To see past coverage of these stories in FOSN, use the search engine at the
FOSN archive.
http://www.topica.com/lists/suber-fos/read
* More on the DMCA
AOL was acquitted of copyright infringement for hosting illegally copied
novels of Harlan Ellison. If you think of the DMCA as the draconian
copyright statute, this may be a surprise. But the DMCA explicitly
releases ISPs from liability for hosting illegal content if they remove it
when notified of its existence. (See the Google story above.) The good
news is that this provision was upheld in court. The bad news is that a
zealous prosecutor hauled an ISP into court despite the statute.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-862849.html
Doug Isenberg on the DMCA exemption for ISPs
http://www.gigalaw.com/articles/2001/isenberg-2001-10.html
* More on the SSSCA (now CBDTPA)
Senator Fritz Hollings has finally introduced the bill, now with a new
name, the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A92-2002Mar21.html
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/175390.html
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-866337.html
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51245,00.html
Hollings' public statement on introducing the bill (arguing for it and
explaining how it differs from the previous draft)
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/cbdtpa/hollings.cbdtpa.release.032102.html
Text of the CBDTPA
http://cryptome.org/broadbandits.htm
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/cbdtpa/
Section by section summary of the CBDTPA
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51275,00.html
EFF's page on the SSSCA/CBDTPA
http://www.eff.org/IP/SSSCA_CBDTPA/
Statements by Jack Valenti and Hilary Rosen in support of the CBDTPA
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/cbdtpa/mpaa.cbdtpa.release.032102.html
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/cbdtpa/riaa.cbdtpa.release.032102.html
Statments by various opponents of the CBDTPA
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/cbdtpa/bsa.cspp.iti.release.032102.html
The _Christian Science Monitor_ has an anti-SSSCA/CBDTPA editorial in the
March 19 issue.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0319/p08s02-comv.html
("Copyright protection is a legitimate concern...But if mechanisms are
built into digital devices to restrict copying, they could easily interfere
with individuals' legitimate and full-range use of their equipment.")
A researcher at Microsoft Research has concluded that copyright security
requires hardware protection, not just software protection. While this
supports the premise of the CBDTPA, it doesn't follow that the CBDTPA
should be adopted. Quoting Bruce Schneier of Counterpane Internet
Security: "If the only thing you want to do in your life is protect the
content of the record companies and Hollywood, then the [CBDTPA] is a great
thing. If you put everybody in a box and locked them all in, then you
wouldn't have murder either....For the entertainment industry to put this
forward just shows how much of the economy they are willing to sacrifice
for their ends."
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-867333.html
To send a FAX to your Congressional delegation opposing the CBDTPA (thanks
to DigitalConsumer)
http://www.digitalconsumer.org/cbdtpa/cbdtpa-inf.html
* More on the deletion of web content to keep it from terrorists and citizens
Recent purges
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/175385.html
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/2909817.htm
* More on the analogy of the FOS revolution to the 1840 mail revolution
In 1840, nations began adopting postage stamps and the "sender pays" rule
for mail, lifting the cost from recipients. I just learned that Sonia
Arrison has been advocating for some time that we curb spam by charging
email users for the privilege of sending email to people they don't
know. That would make email funding similar to p-mail funding. Should we
go there?
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,41860,00.html
----------
Catching up (old news I should have discovered earlier)
* The full text of the anthology of essays, _The Transition from
Paper: Where Are We Going and How Will We Get There?_ (ed. R. Stephen
Berry and Ann Simon Moffat) is online without charge. Many of the papers
have a strong FOS connection. See especially those by Andrew Odlyzko,
Steven Bachrach, Paul Ginsparg, Ann Okerson, Martin Blume, and R. Stephen
Berry.
http://www.amacad.org/publications/trans.htm
(Thanks to LibLicense.)
* CyberCemetery is an free online archive of content from defunct
government web sites. This is all "public grade" information, not a
back-up of content deleted to keep it from terrorists.
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/
(Thanks to LII Week.)
----------
Conferences
If you plan to attend one of the following conferences, please share your
observations with us through our discussion forum.
* Association of Information and Dissemination Centers (ASDIC) Spring 2002
Meeting
http://www.asidic.org/s02program.html
St. Augustine, Florida, March 24-26
* OCLC Institute. Steering by Standards. (A series of satellite
videoconferences.)
http://www.oclc.org/institute/events/sbs.htm
Cyberspace. OAI, March 26. OAIS, April 19. Metadata standards in the
future, May 29.
* WebSearch University
http://www.websearchu.com/
San Francisco, March 25-26; Stamford CT, April 30 - May 1; Washington DC,
September 23-24; Chicago, Octeober 22-23; Dallas, November 19-20.
* European Colloquium on Information Retrieval Research
http://www.cs.strath.ac.uk/ECIR02/
Glasgow, March 25-27
* e-Content: Discovering and Delivering Value
http://www.informationhighways.net/conf/cindex.html
Toronto, March 25-27
* New Developments in Digital Libraries
http://www.iceis.org/workshops/nddl/nddl-cfp.htm
Ciudad Real, Spain, April 2-3
* The New Information Order and the Future of the Archive
http://www.ed.ac.uk/iash/archive.conference.html
Edinburgh, March 20-23
* Copyright Management in Higher Education: Ownership, Access and Control
http://www.umuc.edu/distance/odell/cip/copy_manage2002/
Adelphi, Maryland, April 4-5
* Global Knowledge Partnership Annual Meeting
http://makeashorterlink.com/?F21C3456
Addis Ababa, April 4-5
* What Scholars Need to Know to Publish Today: Digital Writing and Access
for Readers
http://library.albany.edu/symposium/
Albany, New York, April 8
* International Conference on Information Technology: Coding and Computing
http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~srimani/itcc2002/cfp.html
Las Vegas, April 8-10
* NetLab and Friends: 10 Years of Digital Library Development
http://www.lub.lu.se/netlab/conf/
Lund, April 10-12
* E-Content 2002 (on ebooks)
http://litc.sbu.ac.uk/econtent/index.html
London, April 11
* Censorship and Free Access to Information in Libraries and on the Internet
http://www.db.dk/kon/temadag/Censurogytringsfrihed_eng.htm
Copenhagen, April 11
* International Learned Journals Seminar: We Can't Go On Like This: The
Future of Journals
http://www.alpsp.org/s120402.htm
London, April 12
* SIAM International Conference on Data Mining
http://www.siam.org/meetings/sdm02/
Arlington, Virginia, April 11-13
* Creating access to information: EBLIDA workshop on getting a better deal
from your information licences
http://www.eblida.org/conferences/licensing/licensing.htm
The Hague, April 12
* Licensing Electronic Resources to Libraries
http://www.arl.org/scomm/licensing/pworkshop.html
Philadelphia, April 15
* United Kingdom Serials Group Annual Conference and Exhibition
http://www.uksg.org/conference.htm
University of Warwick, April 15- 17
* Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy
http://www.cfp2002.org/
San Francisco, April 16-19
* EDUCAUSE Networking 2002
http://www.educause.edu/netatedu/events/net2002/
Washington, D.C., April 17-18
* Museums and the Web 2002
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2002/
Boston, April 17-20
* Legal Guidelines for Use of Intellectual Property in Higher Education
http://www.oneonta.edu/conference/copyright/
Oneonta, NY, April 19
* Information, Knowledges and Society: Challenges of A New Era
http://www.congreso-info.cu/venglish.htm
Havana, April 22-26
* DAI Institute on The State of Digital Preservation: An International
Perspective
http://www.clir.org/agenda-digpres.html
Washington, D.C., April 24-25
* CLIR Sponsors' Symposium: New Challenges, New Solutions: Libraries for
the Future
http://www.clir.org/agenda_sponsorsymp.html
Washington, D.C., April 26
* The European Library: The Gate to Europe's Knowledge: Milestone Conference
http://www.europeanlibrary.org/
Frankfurt am Main, April 29-30
----------
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