M. Alan Thomas II (profile), 25 Mar 2015 @ 10:03pm
There was a similar incident reported in the consultations prior to the Copyright Office's Orphan Works report back in the day. Sadly, this is one of those cases where you're going to have a hard time making a Fair Use argument from an orphan works basis.
More seriously, there's an outside chance that the original author's deal with the journal may have transferred rights to them without an explicit guarantee that the paper will always publish it under the stated license. In other words, the journal/publisher may have been the one offering the CC license, and it may have been free to stop offering that license at any time (which Elsevier is taking the option to do).
However, even if that's true, existing licensed copies retain their license, so someone needs to mirror all of the CC content and make sure a free repository for it continues to exist.
The part I liked about this was that the channel that was supposed to show the film in India protested the censorship by filling the hour-long time slot with a title card and a ticker full of commentary and praise. It is probably not a good sign for the government that it's been compared to the blank pages published by newspapers during The Emergency.
The publicity rights bit is an eye-roller—if this is even nominally illegal, that just proves it's a bad law—but there's definitely no copyright issue here. And as far as copyright's concerned, as long as the painting itself was legally made, § 109(c) provides the library the right to display it.
Also, it's a difference between tracking that can, in aggregate, reveal very private and personal information vs. knowing simply that some generic officer is performing their office in a particular location today with no tracking over time or of personal lives.
A good point. I think we can; there's a presumption of transparency in government and a presumption of privacy for private citizens. These presumptions can be used to differentiate the cases.
So the NSA knows that (1) nation-states can render IP tracking of a "cyberattack" irrelevant if they've compromised the backbone or even simply hacked the scapegoat and (2) if one nation-state has found a 0 day or other security flaw, another nation-state can hijack it or the resulting data flows for their own purposes.
Now if only we could convince policy-makers of this....
M. Alan Thomas II (profile), 30 Dec 2014 @ 10:42pm
Nevertheless, Zaman’s repeated variation in redirection strategies and his use of technical approaches like the “meta refresh” technique have frustrated Orbitz’s efforts.
Can part of the response filing be a section that just says "RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER}"?
Ah, the child porn strawman–ad hominem. Also Dan Kleinman a.k.a. Safe Libraries, who seems to live to be a one-man vocal minority on this issue. (I wonder if he's still advocating domain-level blocking with OpenDNS when challenged on overblocking/underblocking....)
Assuming that they're serious (and not intentionally pushing an emotional button in order to achieve an ulterior goal), the people raising a child porn argument are focusing on one specific issue on which they only imagine anyone disagrees with them while implicitly or explicitly advocating solutions that are overbroad because they're not considering the impact of their solutions on any factor besides that one issue. Which narrow focus resulting in collateral damage is kinda the objection raised in the article and elsewhere.
Child pornography—the legal-defined category—is illegal. When a patron is encountered accessing it, as with any unambiguously illegal activity (e.g., on with absolute liability), reporting them to the police is proper practice. I will happily argue that any specific individual who has argued or done otherwise is wrong on that specific issue. I am confident from my own experience and reading that few, if any, librarians would disagree with me. There certainly aren't any ALA statements that I'm aware of that say that child pornography should be legal or not reported; there are merely statements that certain methods of handling the problem are ineffective and/or will have unintended consequences that will routinely outweigh the rare cases in which some nominal benefit is obtained.
We agree on the problem; we differ as to what is an appropriate solution because we are not narrowly focused on a single issue. Representing our position purely in terms of how it might theoretically affect your single issue is to make a strawman out of our argument. Attempting to extrapolate our values from a strawman in order to then discredit our morals and values in order to discredit our other arguments is an ad hominem predicated on a strawman, which is hardly a logical argument.
For many people, yes, there are very limited options. I can't say with certainty exactly how many people are limited to exactly 1 "option," but I think that helping other people is important and we should make it as available as possible, not dismiss all but a single service. Library usage statistics show a spike in both general demand and employment-related requests every time there's a recession, so we have hard evidence that libraries are a place that people turn to for help.
Of course, you're right that libraries aren't the only things standing between free society and totalitarianism, between democracy and autocracy. That doesn't mean that they're entire irrelevant, though. For example, John Adams wrote on libraries and democracy in A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law. FDR talked about it, too, although he's obviously more divisive. Still, it does say something about our nation's belief in libraries and democracy that, during the occupation of Japan, we sent a contingent of the nation's top librarians to Japan to create a modern, Western public library system there on the grounds that we couldn't give them democracy without public libraries; it just can't exist.
I'm not a member personally, and I wouldn't support them unreservedly, but within the confines of certain issues, yes, I think they do good work. My point was largely to explain that the various groups with overlapping interests frequently coordinate who takes the lead on any specific case, so I can't say that librarians do it all.
At the risk of seeming like a self-absorbed ass for hogging First Word, first comment, and Last Word, I'm going to Last Word my own comment here so people have somewhere to direct more than just words of thanks.
There are some libraries with odor policies. Some of those are blatant attempts to make it impossible for the homeless to use the library, which is absurd, because how else are they going to get job training and apply for jobs online? But most places the line is drawn at "the smell is making it hard for other patrons to use the library." It takes a serious odor to cross that line, and it will always be a judgement call, but the point is that we can't let one patron interfere with another's right to use the library . . . even if that sometimes sets up impossible double-binds.
Of course, not letting one patron interfere with another goes for all the "moral guardians," too, which is why we fight them. Even the porn people can be a problem if they insist on doing it at a workstation that others can't avoid viewing as they pass by, especially if there's no good way of keeping kids out of the area; that's why porn is often restricted* to a few computers that are in a position where no-one can accidentally see what's on the screens.
In addition to supporting the excellent work done by the ACLU and EFF, you should consider donating to the Freedom to Read Foundation (FTRF), which is a nonprofit litigation-and-education organization run out of the ALA's offices but legally a separate entity for various reasons. Anyone can give/join.
Oh yeah, tons. The phrase was coined in an FBI email obtained by the New York Times via FOIA request, and the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom (ALA OIF) rushed through an order of buttons for the then-upcoming ALA Midwinter conference. I am told that it was the fastest selling piece of merch in their history.
Thank you for your support. We fight hard against censorship, for government transparency, against overbearing copyright, &c., so you can understand why I like Techdirt. (I'd love to see one of the Techdirt regulars on a panel at ALA Annual some year, but that sort of programming isn't my strong suit.) And we're usually pointing out these problems years before anyone else gets on board; during what was being called "the Summer of Snowden," ALA Annual hosted a well-attended panel titled "WE TOLD YOU SO." (We did one on filtering the same year: "Access denied!")
Of course, librarianship's dirty secret is that we didn't really get this liberal and libertarian until circa the '60s. For example, we spent the early part of the 20th century fighting with teachers and the newly-minted child psychologists over which profession was best suited to decide which books were appropriate for children, and not in a good way. But today? Libraries are the most anti-government government agencies around.
I'm proud to call myself a Radical Militant Librarian (to quote the FBI and many, many librarians thereafter). Allies are always welcome.
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Re:
No, seriously, there's some amazing slow-motion footage of it.
I suspect that mosquitoes can't swim through birdshot.
On the post: Walmart Not Horsing Around With Parody Domain Site
Antagonizing people who already have a fan base probably accelerates the Streisand Effect.
On the post: Elsevier Appears To Be Slurping Up Open Access Research, And Charging People To Access It
However, even if that's true, existing licensed copies retain their license, so someone needs to mirror all of the CC content and make sure a free repository for it continues to exist.
On the post: Elsevier Appears To Be Slurping Up Open Access Research, And Charging People To Access It
On the post: Indian Government Attempts To Censor BBC Gang Rape Documentary; Succeeds Only In Drawing More Attention To It
http://www.firstpost.com/living/ndtv-protests-ban-indias-daughter-earns-praise-going-blank -hour-2142425.html
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Re:
On the post: Law Enforcement Wants Google To Cripple Waze Because It Lets The Mean Old Public 'Stalk' Police Officers
Re: Re: Re: You first
On the post: Law Enforcement Wants Google To Cripple Waze Because It Lets The Mean Old Public 'Stalk' Police Officers
Re: Re: You first
On the post: Snowden Documents Show NSA Can't Keep Its Eyes On Its Own Papers; Harvests Data From Other Surveillance Agencies
Now if only we could convince policy-makers of this....
On the post: Why United Airlines And Orbitz Are Suing An Entrepreneur Who Helps People Find Cheaper Flights
On the post: Librarians Are Continuing To Defend Open Access To The Web As A Public Service
Assuming that they're serious (and not intentionally pushing an emotional button in order to achieve an ulterior goal), the people raising a child porn argument are focusing on one specific issue on which they only imagine anyone disagrees with them while implicitly or explicitly advocating solutions that are overbroad because they're not considering the impact of their solutions on any factor besides that one issue. Which narrow focus resulting in collateral damage is kinda the objection raised in the article and elsewhere.
Child pornography—the legal-defined category—is illegal. When a patron is encountered accessing it, as with any unambiguously illegal activity (e.g., on with absolute liability), reporting them to the police is proper practice. I will happily argue that any specific individual who has argued or done otherwise is wrong on that specific issue. I am confident from my own experience and reading that few, if any, librarians would disagree with me. There certainly aren't any ALA statements that I'm aware of that say that child pornography should be legal or not reported; there are merely statements that certain methods of handling the problem are ineffective and/or will have unintended consequences that will routinely outweigh the rare cases in which some nominal benefit is obtained.
We agree on the problem; we differ as to what is an appropriate solution because we are not narrowly focused on a single issue. Representing our position purely in terms of how it might theoretically affect your single issue is to make a strawman out of our argument. Attempting to extrapolate our values from a strawman in order to then discredit our morals and values in order to discredit our other arguments is an ad hominem predicated on a strawman, which is hardly a logical argument.
On the post: Librarians Are Continuing To Defend Open Access To The Web As A Public Service
Re: Re: Re:
Of course, you're right that libraries aren't the only things standing between free society and totalitarianism, between democracy and autocracy. That doesn't mean that they're entire irrelevant, though. For example, John Adams wrote on libraries and democracy in A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law. FDR talked about it, too, although he's obviously more divisive. Still, it does say something about our nation's belief in libraries and democracy that, during the occupation of Japan, we sent a contingent of the nation's top librarians to Japan to create a modern, Western public library system there on the grounds that we couldn't give them democracy without public libraries; it just can't exist.
On the post: Librarians Are Continuing To Defend Open Access To The Web As A Public Service
Re:
On the post: Librarians Are Continuing To Defend Open Access To The Web As A Public Service
Re: Re: Go librarians
On the post: Librarians Are Continuing To Defend Open Access To The Web As A Public Service
Re:
Of course, not letting one patron interfere with another goes for all the "moral guardians," too, which is why we fight them. Even the porn people can be a problem if they insist on doing it at a workstation that others can't avoid viewing as they pass by, especially if there's no good way of keeping kids out of the area; that's why porn is often restricted* to a few computers that are in a position where no-one can accidentally see what's on the screens.
*Preferably by policy, not filters.
On the post: Librarians Are Continuing To Defend Open Access To The Web As A Public Service
Re: Go librarians
On the post: Librarians Are Continuing To Defend Open Access To The Web As A Public Service
Re: Re: Thank you.
There's no IP encumbering the phrase, so there's lot of merch out there these days. I personally own a Guild of Radical Militant Librarians shirt ("Scimus quae legis, et non dicimus") as well as the similarly-themed Intellectual Freedom Fighter messenger bag and somewhat less-related Libr(A)rian (anarchist librarian) tote bag. (The latter two are available as various other types of merch as well.)
On the post: Librarians Are Continuing To Defend Open Access To The Web As A Public Service
Thank you.
Of course, librarianship's dirty secret is that we didn't really get this liberal and libertarian until circa the '60s. For example, we spent the early part of the 20th century fighting with teachers and the newly-minted child psychologists over which profession was best suited to decide which books were appropriate for children, and not in a good way. But today? Libraries are the most anti-government government agencies around.
I'm proud to call myself a Radical Militant Librarian (to quote the FBI and many, many librarians thereafter). Allies are always welcome.
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