FLIF on del.icio.us

Just wanted you all to know that FLIF now has a del.icio.us account, where we will be bookmarking web sites and web resources of interested. We already have a few bookmarks up and will be adding more as we find them.

If you forget where to find us on del.icio.us, we've added a handy link list on the right-hand side of the screen to let you know where else you can find us online.

If you know of some interesting web sites, blogs, resources, or even other del.icio.us accounts that may be of interest to us, email us: FLIFblog @ gmail dot com

ISP actively blocking subscribers from torrent network

An informal experiment by staff of the Associated Press indicates that at least one ISP is actively blocking user access to the popular BitTorrent protocols used for filesharing. This is a challenge to Internet neutrality and freedom to access.

Whatever your opinion on the legality and copyright issues of this technology, this means of data transmission and filesharing has been embraced by many companies and open source projects. Universally blocking subscribers from using this protocol clearly ignores the fact that torrents and other P2P programs do have legitimate uses.

So, unless the ISP in question is looking at the content of the files themselves (a violation of user privacy), then they are indiscriminately blocking access with no clear justification for such behaviour.

Read the ars technica article here.

UPDATE: posted 25 October 2007

The ISP in question has claimed that it is not acitvely blocking torrent traffic, but simply "delaying" such traffic to reduce lag time for more important data packets.

Here is a related Globe and Mail article.

Authors, Exiled

Did you know that there is a subject heading for exiled authors? There is. Next time you are looking for a good read, search for "Authors, Exiled". Subheadings include everythign from Language to Psychology to specific countries. The search works in both the EPL and the UofA online catalogues.

Little Sister Bookstore legal papers in SFU Library's Special Collection

BCLA's Intellectual Freedom Committee reports that the legal papers from the Little Sister's Bookstore have been acquired by the Special Collection at the SFU Library.

Little Sister's have been involved in court battles relating to censorship of gay and lesbian materials by the Canada Border Services. They alledged that Canada Border Services had been unfairly delaying (or worse) gay and lesbian books destined to the bookstore since they first censored the bookstores materials back in the mid 8o's. In January (2007) the Supreme Court ruled that they were not elligiable for advanced costs which they had intended to use to take the Canada Border Services to court. Without the money, they had to admit defeat and drop their plans to fight against discrimination. Xtra.ca explains it further in this article.

School Library Journal censorship links

School libraries are often at the crux of censorship scandals because of the delicate position in which they find themselves. Not only do they have to contend with curriculum demands and limited funding, they also have to be wary of The Parent. Many of the banned and challenged books today get on the list because of librarians and teachers attempting to strike a balance between intellectual freedom and parental concern about controversial books. Do you put The Higher Power of Lucky on your shelf or do you risk the wrath of the 5th grader's parents?
This link is the School Library Journal's round-up of censorship issues.

US Banned Books Week link round-up

As mentioned in the previous post, this week is Banned Books week in the US. I've gathered a few links of interest for you folks, starting with a bunch of links from Jassamyn West of Librarian.net. One such link is to the write up about Banned Books Week from the Amnesty International USA site, where they highlight a few writers who have been persecuted for having an opinion.

If you want something a little more leasurely to peruse, Hatcher Graduate Library has a great set of pictures on Flikr highlighting some banned or challenged books, including the Harry Potter books, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, the controversial kids book And Tango makes three, and how could I not include a young fan being read Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. FYI, if you are in the neighborhood, each picture links you straight to the book in their catalogue for easy access.

Also on Flickr is the ALA's Banned Books Week group, which has lots of great pictures of banned or challenged books, displays, etc. And, of course, we can't forget ALA's Banned Books Week page, where they have tones of info and resources relating to celebrating our rights to read what we want.

US celebrates Banned Books week

This week is Banned Books week. There's lots of great stuff going on and lots of great links to send you to, but I thought that I would start with everyone's favorite library cartoon hero, Dewey:

Right to Know Week

September 28th to October 5th is Right to Know Week in Canada. For the Albertan link, please visit www.oipc.ab.ca.

Library holds and privacy issues

Here's an interesting story about privacy issues relating to how libraries make holds available for their patrons to pick up. According to the article, the public library in question leaves the holds out on shelves where patrons can retrieve them, much in the same way that the UofA's Rutherford Library or the Edmonton Public Library does. The problem is that instead of using the first four letters in the patrons name and/or the last four digit in their library card number, private information is in full view (for example, people passing by can see the full name of the person who put the book on hold). And, while it is true that most people have nothing to hide, I think that I would be hesitant to put anything of a sensitive nature on hold. The examples that Mr. Jaffa (the patron who pointed out the issue) pointed out are good ones - I wouldn't want anyone to know if I needed resources on divorce or cancer. Those are private issues and the library ought to try and keep them private.

Censored art

Everything you ever wanted to know about censored art - the banning, the bleeping, and the out right media blackouts. This website will fascinate you and make you want to rent a banned movie or get down to that banned music: Censorart.com.

By the way, did you know that in 1918 Manitoba banned comedy films? Were comedies that risque back then :)

Freedom of Expression Project, revisited

We've already posted the link to the Freedom of Expression Project, but I wanted to mention it again because it's a great website and they have tonnes of interesting and thought provoking news items. You can subscibe to the RSS feed (heck, you can even choose which subset of feeds oyu want - informaton and debate, drivers of change, etc.). You can check out their handy glossary, which has definitions for everything from "blog" to media democracy. They even have a great list of web resources.

Privacy vs. security

An interesting article on the privacy vs. security issue: Who's making decisions on privacy vs. security?

Woman refuses to return sex ed book

Critic of sex education book refuses to return library copies

Another great example of how force censorship can just make an item all the more popular. After writing a letter to a newspaper, the book in question became more popular. So what's going to happen now that the story made the news and is circulating far and wide.

... hmm, I wonder if my local library has that book.

Whistleblowing and librarianship

From the FAIFE-L listserv:

An interesting article discussing the issues relating to librarians and whistleblowing: Documents, Leaks and the Boundaries of Expression: Government Whistleblowing in an Over-Classificed Age. This article is particularly pertinent to anyone interested in working in a sector that might have confidential or controversial documents.

It's a new school year

Yep, summer is over. I no longer have to work my tail off and commute 2-3 hours day, so I have time to think about doing shocking things ... like up dating this blog. Did you miss us? Have you forgotten about us or given up on us? I certainly hope not. It's a new school year, so we are all full of enthusiasm and energy. Plus, there's a whole load of newbies coming into their first year, so hopefully we'll get a few new posters too.

Please note, I have added yet another list of links to the right side of your screen: Blogs. Yes, blogs. There are plenty out there, so I thought that we should share some of our favorites. I've added a few to get the ball rolling, but there will be more (and, feel free to let us know if there are any great blogs that you think we might like to add to our list).

Hope you all had a great summer, and (for all you students) hope that your up-coming year is absolutely fabulous and filled with intellectual freedom goodness.

Freedom of Expression Project

http://www.freedomofexpression.org.uk/resources/exploring+challenges+and+opp

Where do you draw the line?

This incident raises an interesting question concerning the thin line between freedom of expression and defamation or hate speech.
From FAIFE-L:

On 4 January 1994, the newspaper Le quotidien de Paris published an article by the Austrian historian and journalist Paul Giniewski (1926–), entitled “The obscurity of error” concerning the papal encyclical Veritatis Splendor (1993; The Splendour of Truth). In it,Giniewski wrote that “...Many Christians have recognized that scriptural anti-Judaism and the doctrine of ‘fulfilment’ of the Old Covenant in the New lead to anti-Semitism and prepared the ground in which the idea and implementation of Auschwitz took seed”. On 18 March 1994, the Alliance générale contre le racisme et pour le respect de l’identité française et chrétienne (AGRIF; General Alliance against Racism and for Respect for the French and Christian Identity) brought proceedings against the newspaper, its director, and Giniewski on charges of racially defamatory statements against the Christian community. Giniewski was convicted before domestic courts. On 31 January 2006, however, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said that it did not accept the argument of the domestic courts that Giniewski’s words amounted to accusing Catholics and Christians in general of being responsible for the Nazi massacres, and that Christians were therefore victims of defamation on account of their religious beliefs. The ECHR considered that Giniewski had sought to develop an argument about a specific doctrine and its possible links with the origins of the Holocaust. In so doing, he had made a serious contribution to a wide-ranging and ongoing debate. The article in question did not contain attacks on religious beliefs as such, but a view which Giniewski expressed as a journalist and historian. As in the Chauvy case (2004), the Court declared that “it is an integral part of freedom of expression to seek historical truth”, and that “it is not its role to arbitrate” the underlying historical issues. Giniewski’s article did not incite to disrespect or hatred nor did it cast doubt in any way on clearly established historical facts. The Court ruled unanimously that Giniewski’s freedom of expression had been violated.[Source: ECHR, Case of Giniewski v. France: Judgement (Strasbourg 31 January2006).]

The Open Library

A new project wherein users will be able to input structured data in a wiki format and thus open access all over the world.

http://demo.openlibrary.org/about

Phoning it in

From FAIFE-L:
Telus Cleanses Image on YouTube
Take-down of pro-union films angers Internet speech advocates
http://thetyee.ca/News/2007/07/02/TelusImage/By Bryan Zandberg Published: July 2, 2007
"Earlier this month, Telus ordered YouTube to take down at least 23 videos posted to the site. Each short movie was potentially embarrassing to the telecom's public image since they documented instances of the company's rocky labour relations. Telus claimed their presence on YouTube, a user-generated website, was an act of copyright infringement.YouTube's owners complied and took the videos off-line, but that set off alarm bells among union activists, who argue much of the footage never belonged to Telus in the first place."

London Public Library to install Internet filters on computers in adult section

In response to LPL's proposed installation of Internet filters in the adult section of the library, Prof. Toni Samek, PhD. has written this letter, available at www.librarianactivist.org :
17 June 2007
Dear London Public Library Board,
By way of introduction, I am an Associate Professor at the School of Library & Information Studies, University of Alberta, where I have taught since 1994. I am the author of the books Intellectual Freedom and Social Responsibility in American Librarianship, 1967-1974 (McFarland Publishing, 2001) and Librarianship and Human Rights: A Twenty-first century guide (CHANDOS – Oxford – Publishing, 2007). I convene the Canadian Library Association’s Advisory Committee on Intellectual Freedom. I am a member of the Canadian Association of University Teacher’s Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee. I serve on the Book and Periodical Council’s Freedom of Expression Committee. I am a founding member and first convenor of the Association for Library and Information Science Education’s Information Ethics Special Interest Group. Given my background, I am writing to this letter in order to express my deep concern over the London Public Library’s movement to place a filter on some of the library’s adult Internet access stations. Please accept this statement as an informed request that you please reconsider this disturbing pending curtailment of freedoms in your community.
From the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) and its human rights stance (as reflected in its myriad of statements, resolutions, and urgent press releases, including its Internet Manifesto), on down to the Canadian Library Association (CLA), intellectual freedom is the first core value of librarianship. It is encoded into the CLA Code of Ethics (1976), which first directs Canadian librarians to uphold the CLA Statement on Intellectual Freedom (1974). It is part and parcel of what librarians stand for, including those who live and labour under the Ontario Library Association (OLA) banner.
As professional librarians worldwide know all too well, Internet filters are notoriously semantically, technically, and ideologically flawed. All filters (and their creators and purveyors) both provide a false sense of security and are not favourable to minority groups and disenfranchised individuals (women, GLBTQ populations, radical thinkers, dissenters, suspect communities, women, the girl-child, and so on). The library must not condone this misleading form of technology with its embedded targeting. If you want your library to remain welcoming to all, then you will have a clear conscience with open Internet access. To move from this solid democratic ground, is to erode the role and standing of your library in your community – and by extension in the broader community.
The Canadian library community and its sister communities are watching this development closely. Because what you propose is not a small step down. It is the tip of a very slippery slope. What does the future hold for your collection, your meeting room use, and your sponsorships? Is your library one of the last bastions of public space in your community? How many other spaces in London exist where people are really supported in being true to themselves, no matter what their religion, thought, age, association, dissent, race, philosophy, gender, disability, sexual orientation, nation of origin, citizenship, class, ideology, and so on?
I would be more than pleased to work with your library staff in order to provide some professional development in the area of intellectual freedom and the paramount need for it in library rhetoric and practice at a time when the global community is threatened evermore by just the opposite. Indeed, Amnesty International has just released a warning that the Internet “could change beyond all recognition” unless action is taken against the erosion of online freedoms. This is termed a “virus of repression.” [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6724531.stm] I urge you not to participate in the growing negative global campaign against the free flow of information. The free flow of information is a key condition for education. London Public Library should be as proactive as possible about providing current, quality, multilingual and multi-format sustained education for Internet use – and for as diverse a range of community members as possible. In the long run, those hands that work for lifelong education hold far more hands than those of censors.
Finally, I would like to point out that the CLA’s Statement on Intellectual Freedom directly references and supports the Canadian Charter. What more needs to be said?
Sincerely,Dr. Toni SamekSt. Albert, Alberta