The Chicago Sun-Times reports that a man has been accused of downloading child pornography at a suburban library. Of course, it gets turned into a story about filtering: Library says no to Net filter despite porn case.
Strange how we never seem to get similar angles in other kinds of crime-in-the-library stories: "Library says no to security cameras despite assault," etc.
A great article from Ex Libris that I hope hasn\’t been posted here already:
I know what it\’s like to be the only woman in male-dominated organizations — uncomfortable! — so I always wondered what it was like for men to work in female-dominated professions like librarianship. A while back, I asked my male readers about their experiences, and several of you responded. I also read a survey of male librarians in the March, 1994 American Libraries, and a book by Christine Williams, Still a Man\’s World: Men Who Do Women\’s Work. Between these, I think I\’ve gotten some sense of the pleasures and awkwardnesses of this situation. (More)
Thanks to New Breed Librarian
The Chinese government\’s recent move to restrict Internet access has not stopped e-books from attracting an audience there:
A portable e-book device is now available through The Xinhua Book Store in Xinhua, China. The Xinhua E-Book, which has been developed with a Taiwanese tech company, connects to the Internet and supports multimedia Audio visual programs. The Xinhua Post has created a channel for the device. At another Chinese site, Eshunet.com, e-books are free for the taking. (In Chinese, \”shu\” means book.) All titles are in EXE format and over 700,000 units are downloaded each day. Eshunet encourages redistribution, such as posting e-books to other sites or mailing them to friends, and has obtained permission from its authors to give their work out for free.
More from Wired
\”Persecution of an individual shouldn\’t be any company\’s response to a commercial disagreement, especially regarding copyright,\” Connie Foster, the EPC executive director said Sunday.
All members of the EPC — not just a small portion of them as with print-oriented groups like the AAP — work with the Adobe and other electronic formats to publish their e-books, and we recognize that the same technology that benefits publishers with lower production and distribution costs also aids copyright violators.
In this case, readers\’ interests should be paramount, and the leading e-book formats — Adobe\’s among them — slight them by making it impossible to open an e-book when upgrading to a new computer or when suffering a number of all-too-common computer woes, such as virus infection and hard-disk failure.\”
Read the Full Release.
The Electronic Publishers Coalition was founded by a group of publishers committed to furthering the growth of the e-book community. It is the largest trade association of electronic publishers in the world. A primary role of the EPC is to follow through on its commitment to develop a healthy marketplace for digital content as well as to take a leadership role in setting minimum standards in order to encourage quality within our industry.
Pat Schroeder and company weigh in:
In the AAP\’s announcement, released July 19, president and CEO Patricia Schroeder hailed Sklyarov\’s arrest as consistent with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which prohibits the manufacture or distribution of tools designed to circumvent technological protections on copyrighted material. \”It\’s only common sense to expect that, if the public wants desirable books to be available online and through other digital media like the Adobe Reader, the authors and publishers who have the legal rights to commercially exploit such works in the global digital marketplace must have reasonable assurances that the market value of their works can be protected from the extraordinary risks of illegal reproduction and distribution that are made possible by the capabilities of digital media,\” said Schroeder. \”Congress understood this when it enacted the DMCA to help promote the online availability of copyrighted works.\”
This article and an editorial on the case are available at eBookWeb.
I\’m sure Stephen H. Wildstrom didn\’t give that title as much thought as he should have, or maybe he did.
His Story in Businessweek is about how publishers are developing a system for locating and retrieving material on the Web–especially the sort of copyright works now found mostly in libraries.
They call it the Digital Object Identifier for eBooks, The DOI consists of two parts: a prefix that identifies the publisher, and a publisher-created suffix unique to the work.
The project is also part of a much broader effort to make Web content easier to locate and retrieve. While books are just starting to join the system, there are 3 million DOIs in use giving live cross-references in online academic and professional journals.
Check it out for yourself at crossref.org
Jon Noble writes \”Librarian Lucy Dudko has been jailed for a maximum of ten years after she hijacked a helicopter at gunpoint to pluck her armed robber lover from prison.
Lucy Dudko, a 43-year-old librarian whose father is a Russian military helicopter pilot, was convicted earlier this year of breaking out armed robber John Killick from Silverwater jail on March 25, 1999.
Ms Dudko maintains her innocence and intends to appeal\”
ResPool writes \”The ResPool Research Network, a free research and resource discovery service for librarians and researchers, has announced it is introducing a new feature called \”The Wish List,\” where users can anonymously submit suggestions for information resources that don\’t yet exist but should be developed. Volunteer web developers in and beyond the library community will review the list and, upon finding a project they like or have expertise in, create free resources based on suggestions and make resulting websites available to users worldwide. For more details visit the ResPool home page and click on \”The Wish List\” link. It promises to be a \”gratifying experience.\”
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Adobe and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today jointly recommend the release of Russian programmer Dmitry
Sklyarov from federal custody.
Adobe is also withdrawing its support for the criminal
complaint against Dmitry Sklyarov. I guess I\’ll buy Photoshop 6 after all.
Read the Full Release.
Props to /.
See also this Salon.com Story sent in by Dawn Devine.
Wired Is Reporting the coalition of public libraries, library patrons and website operators that filed the challenge in March against the Children\’s Internet Protection Act of 2000 may get its\’ day in court, next February.
The Justice Department, which is representing
the Federal Communications Commission and
the Institute of Museum and Library Services
in the suit, asked a federal court in
Philadelphia to dismiss the case saying the
challenge is without merit.
They must be too busy praying in the office to have the time to actually defend this one.
\”\”There are a zillion issues here,\” Chief Judge
Edward Becker of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals told a team of Justice Department attorneys during
an hour-long hearing.\”
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