OMB Watcher. February 23, 2004 Vol.5, No. 4. OMB Watch reports on the exemptions the DHS wishes to grant to information disclosure. Months after receiving comments on the proposed rule, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) finally published the interim final rule for Critical Infrastructure Information (CII) in the Feb. 20 Federal Register. Although an [...]
Search Beyond Google. By Wade Roush Technology Review, March 2004. Includes comparisons to Teoma, Mooter, Dipsie, and Microsoft’s AskMSR.
[Politech] Milton Mueller replies to economists on extending copyrights [ip] An interesting exchange on extending copyright protections for longer terms in order to encourage creativity. …it is only publishers seeking rents on existing valuable products, not creators seeking rewards or stimulants for creativity, who are interested in term extensions.
U.S. Embargos Extended to Editing Articles Los Angeles Times, February 21, 2004, page A20. By Mary Curtius, Times Staff Writer. The L.A. Times reports today that a September 30, 2003 ruling of the U.S. Department of the Treasury‘s Office of Foreign Assets Control “pits national security concerns against academic freedom and the international flow of [...]
From last month’s World Social Forum: On Democratisation of Information with a Focus on Libraries. This workshop was interesting on several levels: Information literacy as democratic activism; the necessity of open source software to libraries and democratization…The proceedings and links to relevant materials are available at the end of the summary.
The California primary is coming up quickly (March 2, 2004)! With that in mind, we’ve created the Worldwide Elections Guide. Get information not only about California elections and propositions on this year’s ballot, but research and gather data on the history of elections in Mexico, Central America, Asia, Europe… Find out about the electoral process [...]
NewsForge Tuesday February 17, 2004, By: Joe Barr There are two primary reasons WSIS is doomed. The first is the United States’ position that profit — or even the potential for profit — is more important than the goals of the WSIS. The second reason is procedural. The United Nations prefers to operate by consensus. [...]
Prospect Magazine – Britain’s Intelligent Conversation February 2004. “The Microsoft killers” by Azeem Azhar. “Open source software has come of age, and open source working methods are spreading beyond computers.” Wikipeida, OpenCourseWare, BioMed Central, SlashDot, OhMyNews, even Opencola! An interesting article, and, except for referring to Richard Stallman’s Free Software approach as scary and “techno-utopian,” [...]
Lee Blog: Grokster appeal The appeal in the Grokster case was heard by the 9th Circuit last week (2/4/2004). The district court had ruled in favor of Grokster and against the music industry based on the Sony doctrine. In a nutshell, the doctrine, established by the Supreme Court in the Sony betamax case, holds that [...]
This is great news for the Open Access movement! OECD Ministers Support Open Access for Publicly Funded Research Data The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; http://www.oecd.org), the leading international organization of developed countries, issued a Final Communique on Jan. 30, 2004 supporting open access to publicly funded research data. [thanks LISNews!]