Intellectual Property:
Can This Web Be Saved? Mozilla Accepts DRM, and We All Lose
It’s official: the last holdout for the open web has fallen. Flanked on all sides by Google, Microsoft, Opera, and (it appears) Safari’s support and promotion of the EME DRM-in-HTML standard, Mozilla is giving in to pressure from Hollywood, Netflix, et al, and will be implementing its own third-party version of DRM. It will be rolled out in Desktop Firefox later this year. Mozilla’s CTO, Andreas Gal, says that Mozilla "has little choice." Mozilla’s Chair, Mitchell Baker adds, "Mozilla cannot change the industry on DRM at this point."
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/05/mozilla-and-drm.
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Digital History:
The Library of Congress Wants to Destroy Your Old CDs (For Science)
If you’ve tried listening to any of your old CDs lately, if you even own them anymore, you may have noticed they won’t play. That’s what happened to mine, anyway.
CD players have long since given up on most of the burned mixes I made in college. (In some cases, this is for the best.) And while most of the studio-manufactured albums I bought still play, there’s really no telling how much longer they will. My once-treasured CD collection—so carefully assembled over the course of about a decade beginning in 1994—isn’t just aging; it’s dying. And so is yours. "All of the modern formats weren’t really made to last a long period of time," said Fenella France, chief of preservation research and testing at the Library of Congress. France and her colleagues are trying to figure out how CDs age so that we can better understand how to save them.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/the-library-of-congress-wants-to-destroy-your-old-cds-for-science/370804/.
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Privacy Issues:
Which Tech Companies Help Protect You From Government Data Demands?
Technology companies are privy to our most sensitive information: our conversations, photos, location data, and more. But which companies fight the hardest to protect your privacy from government data requests? Today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) releases its fourth annual "Who Has Your Back" report, with comprehensive information on 26 companies’ commitments to fighting unfair demands for customer data. The report examines the privacy policies, terms of service, public statements, and courtroom track records of major technology companies, including Internet service providers, email providers, social networking sites, and mobile services. EFF’s report awards up to six gold stars for best practices in categories like "require a warrant for content" and "publish transparency reports." Last year, just two companies we surveyed earned a full six stars – Sonic, a California ISP, and Twitter.
Read the post to see which companies have joined the 6-star rank!
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/which-tech-companies-help-protect-you-government-data-demands.
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Freedom of Information:
San Jose revisits library computer filtering
Five years after San Jose officials rejected calls to block pornographic imagery from the city libraries’ computers citing the slippery slope of censorship, the city’s new chief librarian has quietly been revisiting the idea. Advocates for filtering say periodic problems of men accessing pornography on library computers in plain view of children haven’t gone away. And they note that plenty of other places already screen out porn in children’s reading rooms without violating the Constitution, including the Santa Clara County library system.
http://www.mercurynews.com/News/ci_25771701/San-Jose-revisits-library-computer-filtering.
Brewster Kahle, the Librarian of 404 Billion Websites
Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, is a digital librarian who has been working towards the universal access of knowledge since founding the site in 1996, and even before that. An engineer who once studied artificial intelligence and co-founded web ranker Alexa, Kahle, 53, is armed with an obsession to collect everything. I recently had the chance to speak with Kahle about the open source and non-profit web, the Internet Archive, and Open Library, which seeks to build a web page for every book ever published and loan those books out through the web. …
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/brewster-kahle-the-librarian-of-404-billion-websites.
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International Outlook:
U of Saskatchewan Dean Fired Over Opposition to Plan That Cuts Libraries
As part of an overhaul of its budgets and strategic priorities, the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada plans to trim its campus library system from seven branches to three, resulting in much of its collection being moved to offsite storage. Library officials spoke of the plan as in line with their vision for the future of the campus libraries. But some faculty members have publicly questioned the moves, leading one dean to be fired in the wake of a letter he penned criticizing the university’s plans. The closures are part of the college’s larger TransformUS plan, which has raised controversy in recent days. Yesterday, Robert Buckingham, dean of the US School of Public Health released a letter – entitled "The Silence of the Deans (PDF)" – in which he claimed that US faculty had been threatened with dismissal by university president Illene Busch-Vishniac if they spoke out against the plan.
http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2014/05/academic-libraries/u-of-saskatchewan-dean-fired-over-opposition-to-plan-that-cuts-libraries/.
Internet Access:
These companies spend the most money to kill net neutrality
With the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) decision to move forward with a controversial proposal that threatens net neutrality and the open Internet, lobbying activity looks like it has reached a fevered pitch. But for the companies involved—especially the telecom companies that are eager to be allowed to charge more for a "fast lane" of Internet service—lobbying has been at a fevered pitch for almost a decade. Going back to 2005, the principle’s biggest opponents (Verizon, AT&T, Comcast and their allies) have lobbied against net neutrality about three times as hard as the biggest proponents of neutrality (Level 3, Google, Microsoft and their allies). While the dispute over network neutrality is often thought of as a battle between giant corporations, it’s clear from the data that over the lifespan of this issue, the pressure has been far from equal. The leading opponents of neutrality (largely the Internet service providers) have devoted significantly more resources to lobbying than the leading supporters of net neutrality (largely the big tech companies).
http://www.dailydot.com/politics/lobbyists-net-neutrality-fcc/.
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The Intersect Alert is a newsletter of the Government Relations Committee, San Francisco Bay Region Chapter, Special Libraries Association.