Accept no substitutes

Category: Information Commons (Page 26 of 26)

Information Commons, Copyright, Censorship and/or withdrawal of public information, Libraries: Digital and other

Smart People say Dumb things (and Smart Things)

Bill Gates gets caught with a confused message about copyright in an interview with CNet and ends up calling people who want to share “Communists.” This is certain to throw the mostly Libertarian minded Free Software and Creative Commons folks into chaos — not. See boingboing for the best on this. And the /. responses.
He also has a lot to say about:

  • blogging (“I’ve toyed with doing one myself, but I don’t want to be one of those people who start and then don’t finish it, and again I’m thinking maybe I could do one a month or one every six weeks–something like that. I’d kind of like to, but I’ve got to be sure I can keep going for at least a year to make it worth doing.” and later “E-mail is inefficient today with seeing stuff that’s less relevant and how you organize it–bringing in the blog-type capabilities is very important there.”)
  • his beloved Xbox (“And Xbox Live is really talking to your friends, doing things with your friends”)
  • security (“Well, no one invests more in security of their browser than what we do on IE”)
  • FireFox vs IE (“In terms of our agility to do things on the browser, people who underestimated us there in the past lived to regret that.”)
  • Google (” We’ve been in the search business even before Google was around. The commitment we made is to build unique search technology across the board”)
  • and the future (“the tools around Windows and Office are not even half of what they will be.”)

Lessig on the Connection – WUNC

Lessig in Thought
Larry (err Lawrence) Lessig is coming in clear as usual as he explains the Creative Commons and the upcoming Science Commons on NPR’s The Connection right now (11 am EST) and is taking phone calls. You can listen on WUNC or on the Connection site. The show will be in the Connection Archives NOW. Larry gave nice props to Duke’s Jamie (err James) Boyle and his environmental model for the Commons. Thanks to Brewster for sending an SMS message from Frisco to remind me of the airing.

Feb 12 – TriBlogCon – Wiki, Location, better URL

The Triangle Bloggers Conference for 2005 has a home for its meeting on the morning of Saturday February 12. We’ll meet in the Freedom Forum Conference Center, Carroll Hall on the UNC Campus. Thanks to the School of Journalism and Mass Communication for making this possible. ibiblio is also a sponsor of the Conference.
And we have a better URL to get to the Conference Wiki http://mistersugar.com/triblogs.html .
All of this really made possible by the hard work of Anton Zuiker.

Saturday, February 12
9 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Freedom Forum Conference Room, Carroll Hall (j-school)
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
FREE

Local media consolidations

One issue I want to address at the Triangle Bloggers Conference 2005 is the place of blogs as local media and in local media. We can start here if you like. Are we up for being We, the Media?
What’s making me think about this more often and, I hope, more deeply in the last few months are a few local media changes: WCHL as was noticed on Orange Politics went from very very local to mostly syndicated national shows after a visit from a consultant. The Herald-Sun‘s purchase by Paxton and today’s firing of what WRAL says is 20% of the Herald-Sun staff including four of the paper’s senior officers (Thanks to Phil Meyer for the alert on that one). Potential changes at the Chapel Hill News.
And nationally Pulitzer may be up for sale. With rumors that McClatchy, owner of the News and Observer and others, may be one of the next on the line.
Phil Meyer’s new book is the Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information Age. It’s a good read for bloggers and for journalists.

Pew on Blogs

The Pew Center’s Internet and American Life Project just released one of their more or less well-formed studies (one problem: they often use telephone surveys and those surveys have inherent difficulties in that they don’t often reach cell phone only people or people who are not at home much etc) — this one on the state of blogs. The paper is only in PDF format, but is worth a read.

The abstract says:

By the end of 2004 blogs had established themselves as a key part of online culture. Two surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in November established new contours for the blogosphere: 8 million American adults say they have created blogs; blog readership jumped 58% in 2004 and now stands at 27% of internet users; 5% of internet users say they use RSS aggregators or XML readers to get the news and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as it is posted online; and 12% of internet users have posted comments or other material on blogs. Still, 62% of internet users do not know what a blog is.

Who are bloggers (according to Pew):

  • Men: 57% are male
  • Young: 48% are under age 30
  • Broadband users: 70% have broadband at home
  • Internet veterans: 82% have been online for six years or more
  • Relatively well off financially: 42% live in households earning over $50,000
  • Well educated: 39% have college or graduate degrees

Growth in blog-readers far outpaced the growth in blogs themselves. “Still, since [Pew’s] survey in February, there has been greater-than-average growth in blog readership among women, minorities, those between the ages of 30 and 49, and those with home dialup connection.” There is a nice chart that is difficult to extract from the PDF that shows the reader and blogger trends from July 02 to November 04.

2004 of ibiblio

A few selected highlights from the past year of ibiblio.org

Grants and contracts: We received contracts for streaming video in support of the NASA education site. We also received an IMLS (Institute for Museum and Library Services) grant in support of digitizing films for the Folkstreams project. We’re up for a much needed server refresh via an IBM SUR Grant which will be reported in January.

Radio on the net: We celebrated the 10th anniversary of Internet radio with WXYC with music, panels and interviews as well as a free CD for download (from ibiblio of course). We now stream 6 stations and will likely add two more early in 2005. We also participated in the first IPv6 continuous streaming of radio on Internet2 with WXYC and WCPE.

Speakers and visitors: ibiblio visitors and speakers for 2004 included Cory Doctorow, Doc Searls, John Hood (of John Locke Foundation), NC Senator Eric Reeves, bloggers Eric Muller and Corey Dauber, and others. Many ibiblio speakings are available for watching online including the WXYC panel.

Press. We’ve collected our press information including recent articles on ibiblio as well as technical information in an online press kit. One important new item there is Jessamyn West’s article from OCLC Systems and Services: International Digital Library Perspectives. Vol. 20. Number 2 (2004) “Free as in Tibet: ibiblio’s cultural cultivation and community creation”

We have two maturing free software projects. Lyceum is an open source blogsphere and Osprey is a peer-to-peer enabled content distribution system using Bittorrent. An very early version of Osprey is already in use for the WXYC CD downloads and a few other selected offerings.

Bandwidth: We still have to shape our bandwidth use and have with very good results. Even so we regularly use 300 – 400 Mbs. That’s a 100% increase from last year. We’re looking forward to an increase in 2005.

Storage: We’ve just added a NetApp filer which will provide highspeed file access that we desperately need, This is an additional 5+ terabyes of storage.

Management: We have a new CIO for UNC, Dan Reed, who comes to us from UIUC and NCSA. He’s very supportive of ibiblio and I expect we’ll have some opportunities arising from his RENCI projects soon.
We also have a new Dean of Information and Library Science, Jose-Maria Grifiths.
The search for a new Dean of Journalism and Mass Communication is underway as I type with campus visits by the finalists scheduled for very early 2005.

Staff: John Reuning and Fred Stutzman are our two full time employees, sysdamins and project leaders. Nancy Wilson, Josh Myer, Sean Slovney, Max Gustashaw, Patrick Herron, TJ Ward, Bret Dougherty and Adi Unnithan are with us as student employees. Sean and Max have just graduated. Nancy is expecting her first child in January.

Conferences: John and Nancy presented at the Libre Software conference in Bordeaux in the spring. Paul and Fred were among the select invitees to Tim O’Reilly’s FOO Camp. Fred was a presenter at the American Library Association’s Information Commons Summit. Paul was among the invitees to the Wired/Creative Commons’ benefit concert by Gilberto Gil and David Byrne. Paul and Dr. Helen Tibbo presented at the Imaging Science and Technology conference. Paul was a speaker at IBM University Day and among the 3 UNC faculty invited to meet with selected members of the IBM Academy. Fred was a panelist on the Future of Music in the Triangle. Paul spoke to visiting Jordanian journalists.

Other honors and milestones: Contributor Jessamyn West of Librarian.net was an offical blogger for the Democratic National Convention and was featured in many news stories.
Contributor Pamela Jones (and company) at Groklaw won the Linux Journal’s Editors’ Choice Award for Best Non-Technical or Community site.

Collections: we continue to add important collections of all kinds from video tutorials to health care to poetry festivals to software to Tibetan culture. No slowing down there.

CHampion Library

That is Chapel Hill Public Library is a champion having received (again) the very top rating of any public library or library system in North Carolina. In the recent HAPLR ratings for NC libraries — HAPLR stands for Hennen’s American Public Library Ratings — the Chapel Hill Public Library scored 783 or 93% in the adjusted percentiles. Congratulations to Librarian Katherine Thompson and her staff and to the Town for funding the Library well and especially to the voters who on November 4, 2003 approved the issuance of $16.23 million of library bonds.

The Library was the only library to score over 90% in North Carolina, but the goal should be to crack the National Top Ten for our population which would require a score above 860. The building expansion and other improvements funded by the Bonds should take us in that direction.


Here’s how the ratings were reported to the Chapel Hill Town Council in November.

Full disclosure: I am a member of the Chapel Hill Public Library Board of Trustees.

Libraries on the Tracks and on the Ropes

Pre-opening pic of the Children's Librarian's desks
Just back from visiting my folks who are now just west of Charlotte in Matthews. As a sort of busman’s holiday, we also stopped by the new Matthews Branch Library which is the bottom floor of the Matthews Town Hall. The impressive, but almost cornily designed, building has a cupola and large letters that read “Town Hall – Library.” Now that’s a good balance.
Matthews has built a little off road Main Street of shops, the old Train Station, a caboose and a grand circle with Town Hall – Library at the end of it. One side is bordered by a still very much in use railroad track. In the library, the Children’s Section is on the track side with windows always unshaded so that the patrons in that section might wave at the trainsmen — and also because those patrons actually delight in the noise of a passing train. The more relaxed adult sections have stuffed chairs and a fireplace (not working while we were there despite the cold) set as far as possible from the tracks. The layout of the stacks and sections is such that you can have a readaloud in the Children’s and still not be disturbed in the Adult areas.
While there is Internet access throughout the building, the special Internet room with support and monitoring is set apart from the books and other activity areas. I did not see any signs about wireless access. (Wireless access is available less than a block away at the Dilworth Coffee Company — which is not in Dilworth). There are not that many computers there that I saw but I think more than are listed at the Library’s website which was put together before the place opened. Many 30 or so all told.
The train motif is carried off throughout the Children’s Section with the Children’s librarian desks set up like a large steam-powered locomotive (owner’s of the Thomas trademark should not look too closely at this) and a very very large set of crossing lights hanging from the ceiling.
The stacks are wide and welcoming with several faceout displays at the end of various section rows. Most noted ‘favorites’ or ‘staff favorites.’ Note of interest: not many of the staff favorites were recent publications although the selections were quite eclectic.
Over all the library was warm and light, well-stocked (although I did not do any kind of content review), and an excellent example of a branch library.

In less happy, but related, news, Salinas California is closing its three public libraries. The Friends of the Salinas Public Library have kept up with the latest events and news stories for us.

G’boro bloggers get more attention

Jay Rosen’s PressThink site has a nice longer article on the Greensboro News and Record‘s blogsphere vision and a bit about the Piedmont Bloggers Conference, Ed Cone, Lex Alexander, David Hoggard and others. Rosen praises G’boro’s paper for being on the leading edge of citizen and journalistic blogging. It’s no surprise to me that the News and Record is on the forefront; the paper is owned by Landmark Communications whose Virginia Pilot had the first live blogging reporter at the John Malvo trial.
He also makes mention of Anton Zuiker’s organizing the Triangle Bloggers Conference for February 12 — in case you weren’t paying attention ;->

The Evil that is out there (computer version)

No Comment: First, we get comment-spammed to death on every variety of blog on ibiblio. I set up authimage and all is happy (except you guys quit commenting) for me. The Moveable Type comment-spam drove the load on our servers through the roof. Fred and John were on top of that and we are undercontrol there.

Santy: Yesterday and last night, we, like every place that has anyone running phpBB, were attacked by the NeverEverNoSanity worm (aka Santy). Only a few sites were hit, but it was not pretty. John spent the evening before his travels patching all 30 or so of the not updated phpBB sites that we could find on ibiblio. Like many ISPs and universities, we’re still finding defaced sites and instances of the worm.
UPDATE We had more hits and defacings than we first realized, but Fred, Josh and John are far along on the clean-up. The final toll may be as much as 30 sites at least partially defaced. Luckily, the restoration of those sites has mostly gone quickly.

Background Reading: I’m at the same time reviewing a chapter for an upcoming computer security book on spam. One line sticks in my mind: research shows that there are only about 200 active spammers in the world at one time, but they generate more spam than three times the population of the earth every 24 hours.

Pick the Framed Moving Image Winner

Framed Contest Image
As Jennifer Jenkins of Duke Law’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain says in the release below, you can help choose among the finalists in their Moving Image Contest.
The Movies are fun and deal with Intellectual Property issues for music makers and documentary film makers. That is not a self-contradicting statement.
So Watch. Enjoy. Vote.

If you have a moment, please go to:
http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/contest/finalists/
where you can see (and vote for) the finalists in the Duke Center for the
Study of the Public Domain moving image competition. The competition was an international one for the best 2 minute video or animation about the ways that intellectual property affects art– specifically documentary film or music. The videos range from the account of a documentarian trying to cover army recruiters in the North Carolina Piedmont, to a Polish animator’s science fiction vision of music’s apocalyptic future, from a college student’s efforts to make a Public Service Announcement about the Civil Rights movement, to a dissection of the law behind “Super Size Me.” You can vote for your favorite entry at the site. The winners — both Judges’ Selections and “the People’s Choice” — will be announced on January 15th. The competition is part of the Arts Project, which is supported by a generous grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.

Happy Holidays.
Jennifer Jenkins
www.law.duke.edu/cspd

King Ken, burning man again, Googlizing libraries

King Ken in Orange
Max and Sean are graduating and leaving ibiblio to seek their fortunes. Before they left they gave me a delightful gift. I have had consumer lust for King Ken since I first saw him. I am still trying to understand why I feel like I should own a designer vinyl toy, but here I am with one and delighted to have him. I think of King Ken as comix sculpture.

The burning man of the White House is back in the news. This is the spy/informer/whatever Mohamed Alanssi who set himself on fire in front of the White House and almost in front of me last month. The NY Times reports that Alanssi will probably not testify against Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad, and his assistant who Alanssi aided by an FBI agent posing as a Black Panther (as in Huey Newton not as in the big cat) lured to Germany and eventually into US hands. I wrote about my experiences being nearby the Alanssi drama while in DC here
, here, and here.

The library and online world are all abuzz with the news that Google will be scanning in the contents of several major libraries (the University of Michigan, Harvard, Stanford and Oxford Universities, and the New York City Public Library) into their print.google.com product. A part of the Google goal is to seek patents for their scanning process and part is to lead the book searching market (lookout Amazon) and part is, honestly I believe, to “to unlock the wealth of information that’s only available offline and bring it online,” as Google Director of Product Management Susan Wojcicki has said. Despite the loss of the Kahle vs Ashcroft case, there are many many books and articles that can be preserved (in some sense, archivists bear with me), indexed and better accessed legally and digitally. Google are the folks to do the job for sure.
I have no idea how the Google project interacts with, replaces, or augments the plans and work of Project Gutenberg, archive.org’s scanning project or our local Documenting the American South project. I do think that the work of scanning and making the information (if not the knowledge) that is available in books more widely accessible is a great thing and now the bar is raised quite a bit. Thanks Google.

UPDATE: Just took a call from Michelle Kessler of USA Today about the Google scanning story. Tried to get in good words about Documenting the American South, Project Gutenberg and archive.org. We’ll see what, if anything, she uses tomorrow morning.

Pew: Musicians like Music sharing

A newly released report entitled “Artists, Musicians and the Internet” from the Pew Internet and American Life Project shows that musicians like music sharing and not just amongst themselves. Musicians like their work to be heard and have an expectation that they will be paid in concert attendance etc. In a non-random survey of over 2700 musicians and songwriters conducted online, the findings showed that while most were opposed to illegal music sharing, few felt that they had lost money from sharing but instead overwhelmingly the musicians saw the Internet as vital to their potential and actual income. 2/3s of the musicians surveyed said that filesharing was only a minor thread at best.
Of course, our friend Roger McGuinn has been saying this for over ten years now having used his monthly uploads of his own music to his now over 100 song Folk Den project and having testified to the Senate in 2000 about the importance of MP3s to artisits and selfpromotion.
Wired has the best article on the Pew Report as you might expect from the folks who put out the Creative Commons Benefit CD.
One note on the survey: It was done in December 2003. I wonder what changes in musicians attitudes have taken place in the past year.

Kahle and Prelinger Case Dismissed

The most recent legal challenge to the current state of the information commons is that of Brewster Kahle of Archive.org and Rick Prelinger of Prelinger Film Archives. They, with the help of the Stanford Law Center for Internet and Society, contend that the copyright law as it now exists locks up works that have been abandoned or otherwise should have and could have been returned to the public domain. This locking up of such works is, they allege, unconstitutional. They point out that they are not up for taking works that the authors actually want and that are in publication, but rather works that are now out of print and whose authors (or owners) are impossible to find.
They lost in District Court without a hearing, but have appealed to the 9th Circuit.
Wired News has a good brief article. Stanford Law refers to the decision as a setback [longer paper in pdf available there]. Lessig was somewhat involved and his commenters have more to say on his blog. Slashdot covered the story earlier and of course the chorus of commenters was loud there ;->

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