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Librarians to the Rescue
Duke Machesne writes "Citing concerns over materials being distributed to American students by the BSA, MPAA, and RIAA's evil minions, the American Library Association will begin distributing its own, more balanced material this winter. The material will deal with insignificant and oft-overlooked details like fair use. More information on Wired News."
This wasn't because the information in the libraries was bad (actually, it had a lot of good stuff), but as high school students we were generally lazy.
Better than college though, where publishers will force people to buy whole new editions of math books just because they changed the order of the problems at the end of each chapter.
Funny thing is, I've met gay scouts when I was one (a scout, not a gay scout :P). It's like any other place: Some groups are accepting of it, and just say "eh, he's a decent guy, who cares", and other people are bothered by it.
I suspect the religious connections in scouts are why there's that offical anti-gay thing, but offical and practice are two differant things.
http://wsulug.org
Let them buy time in the media like every other business.
Uhm, they *are* the media.
Ever noticed how "unfair and unbalanced" all the stories about copyright are? They kinda miss the whole "there's a large section of the population that think the laws go too far " kinda angle.
Look at the latest stories about DVD Jon finding the streaming key for the AirPort Express.. "HACKER CRACKS AIRTUNES ENCRYPTION" .. uh yeah. I guess it's a more interesting headline than "SMART GUY FINDS HIDDEN NUMBER".
I don't have a lot of hope for the world to fix itself in the short term when it comes to this, maybe 2-3 generations from now when people finally realize that just because it happens in a computer, doesn't mean it's magical and special and worthy of 50 extra obscene laws.
By then I'll be long gone.. but of course my copyrights will be in full effect.
Librarians are getting overruled these days, not just by national directives such as the USA PATRIOT Act, but by activist governors.
e /2004 4-07-13-sd-censor_x.htm
i brary y.cdsettlement.ap/index.html
Last month the South Dakota governor removed a section of the state library Web site because it gave health advice to teens.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlif
This month the Kansas governor had rap CDs removed from all libraryies.
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Music/08/06/l
A Librarian
Read a little history.
The Enlightenment is a specific period of history and that is what the poster was talking about.
The Enlightenment emphasized reason, tolerance and learning.
They support porn access for kids and have a serious liberal slant and there are so many reasons I don't like them.
Um, what? Porn access for kids? Can you point me to a link where the ALA advocates giving out porn to the kids that walk in their libraries? Google seems to be letting me down here.
And the liberal bias thing - I just don't get it. Most librarians I know support smaller, less intrusive government, which seems pretty conservative to me.
The occasional forays into politics that librarians have made in the past few years seem to be the moderating voices of reason, like questioning the value of having a government mandated censor at the firewall or letting the FBI see what books you check out without so much as warrant. These seem like valid questions to be raised, and if the government were suddenly making your job more difficult, while cutting your funding, I'd expect you to be raising similar questions, as a matter of patriotism.
Or were you just being disengenuous?
My other computer is your Windows box
many librarians have been very active in the destruction of the historical record they are supposed to be preserving, in their active efforts to badly microfilm, then pulp, historical newspaper collections.
Cites?
Didn't think so.
Well, it's probably more library administrators (some of who are librarians) fighting to deal with inadequate budgets and space, and the demand for (and sexiness of) newer technologies (Internet access, CDs, etc.) that enroach on existing physical space. You want cites?
Do we want to keep our newspapers?
Novelist buys and saves old papers to avert their destruction
While the story topic is nice, IMHO, the ALA's work in publicizing Ashcroft's demand that libraries remove information about certain US laws from their libraries is far, far more important of a public service!
Everyone's favorite tyrant AG John Ashcroft wanted ordered the American Library Association to destroy all copies of the federal laws on asset forfeiture and to prevent disclosure of their content. Thanks to quick action and a lot of publicity by the ALA and others, the fascists backed off.
This sounds unusual, and I should correct what are likely misconceptions.
First of all, public libraries in Canada are generally free to use, as they are in other civilized nations. In a few areas, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a creeping trend towards annual user fees and whatnot, but I'm hoping that gets stomped on.
Public libraries in Canada are underfunded, however--again, as they are in most other 'civilized' nations. Libraries look for alternate revenue streams. What the parent describes is an opportunity to check out that new bestseller now, rather than waiting for several months for interest to die down. In exchange for that privilege, you pay a small premium. For a lot of people, paying $2 for a week's loan is a much better deal than buying the hardcover for $30.
That extra revenue in part will go to ensuring that the library does have a stock of the current bestsellers, but part of it I'm sure also gets diverted to other library programs. Note that the vast majority of the circulating collection is still available without charge.
In my experience, the only people that are charged for using the regular collections of a public library are individuals visiting from out of town--there's usually a nominal fee, because they haven't already contributed through their local taxes.
That said, I happen to find it bloody interesting that the ALA is getting involved in the whole online/copyrighted scheme of things. This is a public organization, supported by public money (ie your tax dollars) that acquires a broad amount of copyrighted material (and at my local library it extends to music cd's, film, magazines etc) intended for free public consumption.
Actually, this shouldn't be surprising at all. In working with (acquiring, storing, distributing, reading) copyrighted works day in and day out, members of the ALA are subject matter experts on the effects of copyright law. The ALA regularly has to squarely face questions of both copyright law and the First Amendment. Medical associations regularly make statements to the public on issues of health, even in countries (like Canada) where health care is largely publicly funded--and they do it partly for similar reasons. Your doctor doesn't want you to hear about medicine only from a drug company.
How much copyrighted material do most of us deal with in any given day...or lifetime? The ALA includes public libraries, university libraries, various technical groups, and more. A large university collection can exceed ten million items, and include books; maps; newspapers; magazines; recordings of music and the spoken word on CD, audio tape, and LP; moving pictures on 8 mm tape, VHS and Beta cassettes, Laserdisc and DVD; journals in paper and electronic format...plus university librarians also have to deal with professors who want to use copyrighted material in their courses.
Librarians would have to be a lot dimmer than we give them credit for if the ALA were not to take an active interest in the impact of copyright law.
~Idarubicin