LISNews: Librarian News

Jon Stewart: SOPA Will Drive Us To Libraries "Like A Common Masturbator"
The Daily Show featured not one but two segments on SOPA last night, and with Wikipedia "dark," Jon Stewart had a dickens of a time figuring out just what the hell SOPA means. (What was he supposed to do to learn things, "go to the library like a common masturbator?") And so Stew-Beef reluctantly turned to the "notoriously unreliable news" for answers, discovering, to his horror, that this law could send violators to jail for up to five years for merely streaming copyrighted material.

Peter Murray writes: "The project that I was seeking feedback on over the fall is seeing the light of day. http://foss4lib.org/ is now open for use by the community. For the Code4Lib audience, this mostly means you can create an account, log in, and create content nodes for specific packages, releases, and events. Seehttp://foss4lib.org/content/adding-information-foss4lib for links on how to get started.

For people or organizations that provide support for open source software in libraries -- implementation consulting, hosting, custom code development, training, etc. -- we especially want to encourage you to sign up and post your availability on the site. One of the overarching goals is to promote an ecosystem of open source support providers for packages that are specific to libraries. So we want to make this registry a better place to go to find those support options over a scattershot Google search. Please note that there is one bit of functionality in the registry that is not done right now. Some software packages have well developed lists of providers and institutions that use the software, and we're not trying to reproduce those in the registry. There is a capability coming that will allow URLs to these community lists to override the provider/using-institution functionality of the registry. More on that soon.

Speaking of additional functionality, I am very interested in hearing ideas about how the registry can advance the goal of supporting open source software in libraries. If you have any, feel free to discuss them here or send me a direct e-mail. A press release about FOSS4LIB will be going out in the next couple of hours, and it will include information about one-hour introductory sessions at Midwinter and webinars later in January and February.
Here's the instructions: -- Read More

Amidst SOPA, PIPA Blackouts, Issa Introduces Rival OPEN Act
midst today's Web blackouts, Rep. Darrell Issa formally introduced his SOPA/PIPA alternative, dubbed the OPEN Act.
The bill would call on the International Trade Commission (ITC) to handle overseas "rogue" Web sites rather than the Justice Department.
The bill, H.R. 3782, would allow the ITC to cut off funding from sites found to be trafficking in counterfeit goods, from purses and prescription drugs to DVDs and MP3s.

Wikipedia may black out its website Wednesday to protest anti-piracy legislation under consideration in Congress.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales announced on Twitter Monday that the popular community-based online encyclopedia will shut down its English versions for 24 hours in protest. Users of the site have discussed for more than a month whether it should react to the legislation and in the past few days, tried to decide how.

The foundation behind the site, Wikimedia, says it is still collecting input from users and expects to make its final decision later Monday evening on the details of the protest based on that feedback. However, a large-scale blackout is expected at this time.

Article in the Washington Post