Expect Resistance & Library Autonomous Zone

DRM technology has its first two major trainwrecks, by David Berlind, ZDNet.com October 28, 2005.

…in addition to making sure your content doesn’t work on incompatible devices, now the DRM technology keeps the content from working on compatible ones.

Some license issuers will not allow you to store backups of their license filesÉ.However, if you use these steps to reset the DRM system and do not have backup copies of your licenses, you will lose the ability to play any previously acquired protected content.

EFF: 3-minute Guide to the Broadcast Flag, by Cory Doctorow, Electronic Frontier Foundation
European Affairs Coordinator.

Copyfight
calls this “The Broadcast Flag for Dummies” and has more useful links to basic information about the broadcast flag.

As Cory notes, the “broadcast flag” is just the most recent example of the entertainment industry running scared:

The entertainment companies don’t like tools that give you more control. The movie studios boycotted TV because they thought it would clean out the movie theaters. Then they complained that the remote control would make it too easy to skip commercials. Then they freaked out over the VCR, saying it was the “Boston Strangler” of the American film industry and accusing the Japanese (i.e., Sony) of deliberately sabotaging the American economy by targeting the made-in-America film industry with their infernal VCRs. They’re not fond of video-capture cards, sued into bankruptcy a personal video recorder company (like TiVo)…and the list goes on and on.

Media Companies Go Too Far in Curbing Consumers’ Activities, By WALTER S. MOSSBERG,
The Wall Street Journal., October 20, 2005.

Mossberg enumerates the problems with Digital
Rights Management (DRM) technologies on iTunes,
TiVo, Windows Media Player, and more. He notes
that “the real issue isn’t DRM itself — it’s the manner in which DRM is used by copyright holders…. [T]reating all consumers as potential criminals by using DRM to overly limit their activities is just plain wrong.”

Thanks to Copyfight!

Creating Passionate Users: The Concept Carification effect by Kathy Sierra on October 21, 2005.

Kathy Sierra is one of the strongest advocates
for users of anyone I know. Her “Head First” books from O’Reilly are best sellers because she knows how to write and create books that connect to people.

Although her website Creating Passionate Users isn’t aimed at libraries, many of her posts address issues that affect libraries.

I recommend this article as an example. In it
she addresses one of her favorite themes: why
good, creative ideas never get implemented.
When she talks about “competition,” we in libraries should be thinking about whether or not users will
find libraries relevant if we are not creative.

Obviously there are a zillion reasons why wild-ass concepts can’t (and shouldn’t) find their way into final production, but how many of those reasons are truly valid? When people say, “We can’t afford to do it that way…” we should always ask, “Can’t… or Don’t Want To?” followed by, “Can we afford not to?”

If being remarkable is one of the only ways we can hope to compete in a world where everything has a ton of competition…

We have to keep fighting the Concept Carification effect, to keep at least some of our ideas alive, sharp edges intact. This is not an easy battle, since it involves separating the crap ideas from the brilliant concepts, with NO evidence. After all, most revolutionary concepts do NOT come directly from what users ask for.

When you’re really really on to something magical, you can guarantee there will be devil’s advocates, naysayers, and viscious critics every step of the way. Yes, sometimes those critics will be right, but if we aren’t brave enough to fight through it when nobody knows for certain, then everything good will be stuck in the concept stage, and we’ll be left with… all of the boring, undifferentiated, or lame products we have now.

Wired magazine has a good story
(Cliff Notes From the Blog World, By Ryan Singel,
Wired, October 21, 2005)
on a useful new service that tracks
blogs and what’s being discussed.

• Memeorandum “Political Web,
  page A1″
• tech.memorandum “Tech Web,
  page A1″

The service “aims to be the automated newspaper of the online world”
and provides two distinct and separate views, one for politics and one for
technology. Each is updated every 5 minutes with the most relevant items
from thousands of news sites and weblogs. As the Wired story notes,
“in addition to automatically tracking the top stories of the day, it also
highlights the conversations between bloggers and mainstream media about
each topic.”

“If you read blogs, you know that there is this
conversation and that some articles are the talk of the day, and other
posts have important things to say about those,” Rivera said. “If you built
graphs in your mind of what the talk looks like, I think it looks like what
I’ve done. I get the sense (Memeorandum) is just a natural representation
of what is already going on.”

Rivera hopes the site will appeal to more than just the Ÿberconnected,
and could be useful as an entry point for those unfamiliar with blogs. To
that end, the site’s design, which features large headlines and stories in
declining order of importance, mimics that of an online newspaper.

Stanford iTunes

Stanford on iTunes provides university-related audio content via the iTunes Music Store, AppleÕs popular music jukebox and online music store. Stanford on iTunes gives alumni and the general public free access to a wide range of Stanford-specific digital audio content. The project includes two sites:

• a public site, targeted primarily at alumni, which will include Stanford faculty lectures, learning materials, music, sports, and more.
• an access-restricted site for students delivering course-based materials and advising content.

Examples:

• Lectures (e.g., Confronting Katrina: Race, Class, and Disaster in American Society: Foundations of Neglect 2:00:11 CCSRE Affiliated Faculty Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity)
• Music (e.g., BRAHMS: Zwei Gesange, Op. 91 Mov 2 8:54 St. Lawrence String Quartet and jazz pianist Mark Applebaum Music - Concerts)
• Books and Authors, discussions and interviews (e.g., The Bondwoman’s Narrative: Interview 9:41 Harry Elam Book Salon

See also: Stanford U. Makes Podcasts of Lectures, Games,
and Music Available Through Apple’s iTunes, By JEFFREY R. YOUNG,
Chronicle of Higher Education, October 21, 2005 [freely available
for a few days, then subscription required].

ACRLog
ACRLog is the official blog of the Association of College & Research Libraries.

ACRLog is a blog that aims to discuss the issues of the day in the field of academic librarianship. It will strive to get you thinking about what you do, why you do it, and how it fits into this enterprise we call higher education. We are passionate about academic librarianship so we will call it the way we see it. You may not always agree with us - and when you do or donÕt - let us know - but if we get you thinking about the issues that impact on academic librarianship then we are doing our job.

I Spy With My Little EULA., by Donna Wentworth,
Copyfight, October 14, 2005.

Wentworth reports on a particularly nasty development and links to lots more information.
The issue is a EULA (End User License Agreement) that one company is using that allows it to run a program on your computer every 15 seconds and communicate information about what you are doing on your computer to the
company.

For more information on EULAs see
A User’s Guide to EULAs
By Annalee Newitz, at the EFF site.

Yahoo! Search - Instant Search.
“Instant Search gives you answers as you type — no more waiting!”

This beta application from
Yahoo next uses
Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) programming to deliver immediately, as you type, a best match
for your search. This is certainly an interesting and flashy application
that may be useful in some search situations.

It is also interesting to look at the technology behind the application and how such technology might be of use to libraries. Ajax applications “look almost as if they reside on the user’s machine, rather than across the Internet on a server. The reason: pages get updated, not entirely refreshed.” (Ajax wikipedia article).

But this technology also has privacy implications:
Using the XMLHttpRequest Object and AJAX to Spy On You by Earle Castledine, devX.com, August 9, 2005.

First Monday Special Issue #2: Open Source October 2005

An excellent compilation.
“Many of those contributions have appeared in First Monday and hence, this special issue is a celebration of these contributions and their impact on academia and practice.”
Papers are grouped in the following categories:

Reflections
The Classic Beginning
Motivation
Social Structure
Linux
Critiques of Open Source