MLK Video Removed on Internet Freedom Day

Internet Freedom Day was celebrated worldwide on Friday January 18^th. A website was created to provide suggestions on how to promote the occasion and spread awareness of the need for an open and accessible Internet. One of the actions suggested on this site is to share a copyrighted video on the Internet:

Engage in a small act of civil disobedience and share this video of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech. Dr. King’s call for racial justice is as relevant today as it was in 1963. Because this speech is copyrighted, if SOPA had passed, entire websites could have been shut down just for linking to it. This speech is too important to be censored by broken copyright laws. Please share it today.

As an article by the Washington Post has pointed out, Internet activists posted the video of the speech to Vimeo. However, Vimeo removed the video after only a few hours. Digital Trends has reported that the video was removed because it violated the Vimeo terms of service. The footage contained in the video is currently owned by EMI Publishing.

Challenges with Digital Music Matching Services

Many reports have recently surfaced about the new scan-and-match feature for Google Music. According to a Daily Mail article: “Scan-and-match is a free service that scans a user’s computer, giving them online access to the songs it finds, provided Google can match those songs on its servers. The service saves you the time of manually uploading your music to Google Music by scanning the files in your library and comparing them to songs in the Google Music library.”

An article from The Verge describes how some American users have been experiencing problems with this matching service: “explicit” songs are being replaced by “clean” versions in some cases, and others are findings that “clean” songs are replaced by “explicit” versions. Users are able to use a “Fix Incorrect Match” feature as a way to restore the original version of their songs.

Though some are criticizing Google for censorship because of the “explicit” for “clean” version swapping, the Verge reports that “Whether this challenge is simply inherent to music matching services or something else is at play remains unclear.” As previously stated, the service does seem to be swapping “clean” for “explicit” in some instances so the problems are not simply censorship. However, it is interesting nevertheless to consider how censorship affects users of online services such as music matching. Similar problems have been reported in the past for the matching services provided through iTunes Match and Amazon Cloud.

Welcome to December & the Banned Books Advent Calendar!

The year has flown by and here we are on the first of December. As many of us dive head first into exams and final projects why don't you take a moment to start the count-down to Christmas with the first Banned Books Video Advent Calendar created by the Entresse Library in Espoo and FAIFE (Committee on Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression).


Day 1, Banned Books Calendar from Entressen kirjasto on Vimeo.

From the IFLA blog: 

The project's participants include leading figures in the library world, who introduce their favourite banned books: IFLA President Ingrid Parent presents Timothy Findlay's The Wars; Finnish IFLA President-Elect Sinikka Sipilä presents Mika Waltari's The Egyptian; Kai Ekholm introduces Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Executive Director Jill Cousins of the Europeana Foundation expounds on James Joyce's Ulysses. Other books include Art Spiegelman's Maus, Hitler's Mein Kampf, Boccaccio's Decameron and Walt Disney's Donald Duck.
"We wanted to show that books have been censored for centuries for daring to defy the Catholic Church with its Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the Puritans, judicial systems and politicians," Ekholm notes. The purpose of the project is to promote public debate. Viewers can have their say on whether the books were banned for a sensible reason. "Books are still being burned, but the focus now is on online censorship. Sad examples include Turkey and Hungary in Europe and, on the world stage, China, where 450 million online citizens live in a closed intranet without access to Facebook or various Google searches. Perhaps next year's calendar will focus on banned web pages."

Following the tradition of the Advent calendar, each day between December 1st and December 24th a new window will open and a new book will be presented on several sites throughout the world.

Library 101!

I have been meaning to post about this multimedia project for awhile, please visit Library101 to check out a wonderful collection of library resources and essays (including a great cheesy video made in collaboration by many librarians).
There are essays from various library supporters (including President Obama!), it is largely US focused but is a fun look at current library trends.