Bonus post, they know where I am

I'm pretty sure Marcus Yallow would not be an iPhone user after reading this story. It seems like a lot of my posts are Apple here. As an iPhone user, it would be nice if I knew what this information was being used for and who was using it. I doubt they're sharing this information with the government.....yet. DUN DUN DUN.

Bonus Post, eReader price wars

This story is good news for those looking to enter the exciting new world of eBooks. I doubt it will be too long before we start to see eReaders near the $100 price point. This will certainly heat up the adoption rate of the technology, and libraries will have to start to seriously look at how they will handle "loaning" digital books for these machines.

Blog Post #5

What would Marcus Yallow think of this? Under this legislation proposed by Senators Lieberman(I), Carper(D), and Collins(R), the president would be given authority to shut down parts of the internet in the case of national emergencies. It would also create a new agency under the Department of Homeland Security called the National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications. According to the report, "any private company company reliant on the Internet, the telephone system, or any other component of the U.S. information infrastructure would be subject to command by the NCCC." Some companies would also be required to engage in "information sharing". The internet is the defining technology of the past 20 years, and has changed the lives of most people. I personally gather a vast majority of my news from the internet, and I connect with friends and family through it as well. If some terrible event was happening, I would not want to be disconnected from that. I definitely wouldn't trust television news for gathering information on any serious situations.

It seems like there should be a better solution. Dr. Moeller discusses a story about building a newer, more secure internet in her blog post this week. This new internet would be also more restricted. I"m not really a tech person, but couldn't the "gated community" internet be used for government, military, and financial institutions, and the government could leave "our" internet alone? Isn't the Internet one of the most democratic institutions available?

Bonus Post, Free stuff!

This fits into Cory Doctorow's views from his introduction to Little Brother. I have always been a believer in the theory that if you're actually making something that people want then they will pay for it. I don't download 'free' music off the internet(except for maybe live stuff and rarities) because I want that artist to be able to make more of it. I may also be thinking like a musician who would want to be paid for their services. I'm not sure the RIAA has ever thought that maybe the reason people steal so much popular music is because it is of such poor quality. It's basically throw away music for a throw away society. Sorry, I'm a bit of a music snob. Anyway, by giving away something of quality for free, people will turn into fans. Then they'll want to buy everything/go to every event dealing with that author/musician/whatever.

Bonus Post, Apple reverses some censorship decisions

Apple reversed its decision to censor a couple of graphic novels. I post last week about them censoring a graphic novel version of Ulysses, and they also reversed a decision on a graphic novel version of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest which featured some illustrations of buttocks and a couple of men kissing. Apple admits that censoring these books was a mistake, but it seems like they need to review some internal policies to keep these mistakes from happening every week. So, a somewhat happy ending?

Post #4

This, as Stephen Colbert would say, "The Wall Street Journal" article does a decent job of quickly describing recent developments in the net neutrality battle and how they might pertain to AT&Ts new smart phone data plan rates. AT&T is going to start charging users $15/month for up to 200 megabytes of data usage and $25/month for usage up to 2 gigabytes. Any data usage over the plan will be like if you use more minutes than you have on your phone plan. The part that will cause problems for some people is that there is no unlimited data plan. AT&T is basically avoiding the net neutrality problem by charging for the amount of data used, whereas most ISPs charge a flat rate based on the speed of the connection. I wonder what happens when more people are using portable devices as their primary digital device. The iPad has a version that works over the cell network. People with these devices could quickly use their allotted data by downloading movies and music from the iTunes store. I mostly use the iTunes store from my phone because I hear something when I'm out and just download it right then before I forget. The new iPhone will have face to face video chat which will take up quite a bit of data for people that utilize the feature. People are going to have to learn to monitor how much data they access, which is slightly harder than monitoring how many minutes you've talked on the phone. Instead of making a robust network that could handle more data and more users, AT&T seems to be cutting off its biggest users at the knees.

Bonus Post 2, Apple censors Ulysses graphic novel

I just saw this. I'm hoping that Apple will look at it's policies regarding adult content on the iPhone and iPad in the near future. If they consider graphic novels 'apps', then there are going to be a lot of graphic novels not available on the iPad. This would include most Alan Moore books and even Craig Thompson's Blankets. I'm not sure why this wouldn't be treated like a movie in the iTunes store(plenty of which contain nudity). I understand some of the reasoning that Apple has for protecting its products, but this seems to be a little too far. This comes from someone that's posting this message from my iMac while my iPhone is 6 inches away.

Bonus Post, 'Bat fellatio causes a scandal in academia'

Here's another interesting story dealing with academic freedom and research that might offend some people. I wish there was a little more back story here. The researcher could have been totally inappropriate in presenting this material to his colleague, and harassment is one of those things that is rightfully in the eye of the beholder. But if he was just sharing his research with a colleague, there are implications for academic here.

Post #3

Marquette University in Wisconsin recently rescinded a job offer to a candidate because of her academic research dealing with lesbian issues. Jodi O'Brien, an openly gay professor at Seattle University, was appointed dean of the college arts and sciences, but the school discovered that some of her academic writings didn't exactly mesh with church teachings. There are couple things that strike me as odd about this decision. First, shouldn't part of the hiring process for a dean involve becoming familiar with their research? I was on a search and screen committee for an open librarian position, and we definitely looked at scholarly publications of the candidates to help us make our decisions. It is possible that the hiring committee and deans were fine with her research, but there could have been angry donors or trustees that didn't agree with the situation. Another odd thing is that both Marquette and Seattle University are Jesuit institutions. That means that her research at Seattle University was probably supported by the university.

This also has some obvious implications for academic and intellectual freedom. Faculty might be weary of pursuing some areas of research if they are worried that it could affect future career advancement. Institutions like Marquette which strive to be competitive academic research centers may lose some top talent. Their future candidate pools could be adversely affected if academics and researches feel that their research will be used against them in hiring and advancement decisions.

Blog Post #2

This story is pretty much a typical case of a challenged book in a school library. A school board member, John Briscoe, claimed that Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings shouldn't be lent out to students by teachers. He objects to a graphic rape scene in the book. The problem with his argument is that the book is already restricted. Teachers aren't allowed to have the book in their classroom, and a child needs parental permission to check out the book from the school libary. The quote that I always find disturbing is this:

"The tentative first step taken by Ocean View to require a wink or head nod of parental approval is just that, a first step," he[Briscoe] wrote.(emphasis mine)

By "a wink or nod", I think he means written approval from a parent deciding what is best for their own children. The mention of "a first step" is typical of these stories. It's easy to imagine that the second step would be to permanently remove the book from all schools in the district, but what exactly is the final step?

The story also includes the always crowd pleasing stunt of reading the offensive parts of the book totally out of context in the middle of the meeting. I can only imagine someone yelling out "won't someone please think of the children?!"(Mrs. Lovejoy style from the Simpsons) in the middle of this meeting.

Also, the book has been checked out of the school library 5 times in the past 15 years.

Blog Post #1

One of the most recent national news stories involving intellectual freedom is out of Washington state. (A WSJ article on this story can be found here.)The state Supreme Court in Washington has ruled that libraries can filter content on the internet. It's already required that public libraries receiving certain funds from the federal government must have some sort of filtering technology on their public computers. The most troubling part of the ruling seems to be that the library is allowed to refuse to remove the filter even for sites that feature constitutionally protected free speech. The court views the decision to filter internet access as a collection development issue. Instead of treating the internet as one whole resource, they feel that picking and choosing which sites to allow access to is the same as selecting which books to include in the collection.

To keep the library as "safe" as possible, the library should have a well thought out internet usage policy that will prohibit the viewing of obscene or illegal materials. Action can then be taken against a patron caught violating the internet usage policy. The library will also have to be aware of local laws dealing with materials that may be "harmful to minors". However, the plaintiffs in this case were "a Ferry County woman who wanted to do research on tobacco use by youth; a professional photographer blocked from using YouTube and from researching art galleries and health issues; and an Okanogan man unable to access his blog, as well as information relating to gun use by hunters." Discretion as to which sites are "acceptable" seem to be left to library staff. I would imagine this is sometimes not even a librarian, it could just be a library assistant staffing the reference desk. The ALA has a helpful resource for help in developing an internet usage policy here.