April 20, 2024

SOPA: A Call to Action for Librarians

Voicing her opposition to SOPA, the anti-piracy bill making its way through Congress, library technologist Jessamyn West has called on her peers in the profession to take action, for starters, by becoming informed.

Penguin’s Ebook Decision Has Chilling Effect on School Libraries

girl with ereader and headphones

Penguin’s suspension of Kindle access to its titles for libraries reaffirmed one librarian’s decision to go the public domain route, rather than spend money on titles only to have the rights potentially taken away.

Link: Supreme Court copyright case will decide fate of millions of once-public works – The Washington Post

“This case raises the question, ‘What is copyright really for?’ ” said Golan’s attorney, Anthony Falzone, of the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society. “Is it just something that benefits authors, or is it something that benefits society?”

Link: Privacy advocates want Facebook probed on recent changes

he group’s complaints about Facebook’s adoption of frictionless sharing for some applications and the start of Timeline, an updated profile that makes a user’s entire history on the site easily viewable at once, reveal a fundamental divide on the nature of sharing data online.