Expect Resistance & Library Autonomous Zone

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 interim final rule with a public comment period open until May 20, the rule went into effect immediately.

Procedures for Handling Critical Infrastructure Information; Interim Rule
Federal Register February 20, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 34)]
[Rules and Regulations]
[Page 8073-8089]
another copy

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 information.” It says that altering any works written in Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, or Cuba is illegal.” and that academic publishers including the
American Chemical Society and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers are grappling with the implications.

In a statement issued Friday in response to questions from the Los Angeles Times, [John H.] Marburger, Bush’s science advisor, indicated unease with the regulations. Marburger said he supports “the use of economic sanctions against state sponsors of terrorism.” But he added, “I’m concerned about the impact interpretations of such sanctions may have on scientific publishing and, therefore, scientific openness. We are working on this issue and hope to achieve a satisfactory resolution.”

The OFAC ruling referred to in the article is evidently this one:

031002-FACRL-IA-11 September 30, 2003
(pdf)

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.
Read the rest of this entry »

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 from our backyard to the entire world.

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. So as long as any one member of the WSIS objects to a portion of the plan, the plan cannot move forward. Put those two impediments together, and add the fact that the Microsoft/proprietary software/IP lobbies refuse to let the government do anything that they perceive as even a remote threat against future profits, and you have a greater barrier to WSIS success than the digital divide it attempts to span.

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,” very informative.

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 it is not contributory infringement under copyyright law to make a technology that is capable of substantial noninfringing uses. Since a VCR can be used to legitimately record copyrighted shows, the movie industry can’t hold VCR makers liable just because the VCR facilitates illegal copying of shows. In the Grokster case, Judge Wilson ruled that the Sony doctrine also applies to the Grokster file-sharing software, which is capable of substantial noninfringing uses.

Don’t forget to check out the audio of the oral arguments. quite interesting and heartening!

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!]