From The Chronicle of Higher Education:
In a closely watched copyright-infringement lawsuit, Georgia State University fired back this week at its accusers, three academic publishers that say the institution invites students to illegally download and print readings from thousands of works. The university asserts that its online distribution of course material is permitted under copyright law's fair-use exemption.
From Public.Resource.org:
The Government Accountability Office released 10 DVDs of materials, containing 619,481 PDF files. This material has been placed on-line for the public to examine. Even a cursory examination shows how incredibly valuable the Federal Legislative Histories are and what a loss to the U.S. Congress, the legal profession, and the general public it would be lock up this amazing resource created by those talented professionals, the Government Accountability Office legislative historians. As employees of the U.S. Congress, their work benefits us all and should be part of our common pool of public domain resources.In response to the data release by the GAO, we have proposed an unsolicited joint venture [ pdf ] which would allow the GAO to ship to us the same materials they shipped to Thomson West.
Browse the GAO's data release.
From the EPA:
As a backdrop to the National Dialogue, we conducted a review of existing reports to summarize what we have learned in the past about the needs of EPA's audiences. Past focus groups, usability studies and general information about audience needs and preferences for environmental information can help inform current information collection and validate findings. This report summarizes existing information needs for five of EPA’s major audience groups: government officials; news media; environmental and community groups; industry; and educators, students, researchers and librarians. Specifically, we report on their basic needs for information, information quality preferences, important information topics and uses of environmental information.
Review of Reports, Focus Groups and Other Resources on Information Access, from 1997 to 2008 (PDF) (15 pp, 242K)
From the EPA page, be sure to also see the Listening Sessions and June 9-13 Partner Blog summaries.
From the Public Policy Institute of California:
This survey is the first in a new five-year PPIC Statewide Survey series focusing on information technology issues, funded with grants from the California Emerging Technology Fund and from ZeroDivide. The series’ intent is to inform state policymakers, encourage discussion, and raise public awareness about a variety of information technology issues. For this benchmark survey, we draw upon earlier PPIC Statewide Surveys for California trends over time and recent surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life Project for national comparisons.Although the use of the Internet and information technology is expanding nationally, with California a global leader in this arena, we know from past studies that a number of large and important subgroups in the California population do not have access to information technology. Given the role of the Internet in modern society, and the reality of the digital divide, this survey seeks to inform and improve public policy choices involving this disjunction between large populations who are and are not “connected.” We examine both access and use of information technology as well as the public’s perceptions and attitudes.
From the Inside Google Book Search blog:
For U.S. books published between 1923 and 1963, the rights holder needed to submit a form to the U.S. Copyright Office renewing the copyright 28 years after publication. In most cases, books that were never renewed are now in the public domain. Estimates of how many books were renewed vary, but everyone agrees that most books weren't renewed. If true, that means that the majority of U.S. books published between 1923 and 1963 are freely usable.How do you find out whether a book was renewed? You have to check the U.S. Copyright Office records. Records from 1978 onward are online (see http://www.copyright.gov/records) but not downloadable in bulk. The Copyright Office hasn't digitized their earlier records, but Carnegie Mellon scanned them as part of their Universal Library Project, and the tireless folks at Project Gutenberg and the Distributed Proofreaders painstakingly corrected the OCR.
Thanks to the efforts of Google software engineer Jarkko Hietaniemi, we've gathered the records from both sources, massaged them a bit for easier parsing, and combined them into a single XML file available for download here.
From Search Engine Watch:
Like a politician making campaign promises, Google has announced its involvement in the launch of the "Internet for Everyone" campaign. Unlike politicians, we actually know what the campaign is all about from the title and there's a higher chance of Google carrying out this platform than politicians keeping their promises.The "Internet for Everyone" campaign is based on four principles: Access, Choice, Openness, and Innovation.
From Slate:
I got bad news from the FBI a few months ago. A file I'd requested under the Freedom of Information Act wasn't going to be available. Ever.And not for one of the reasons I already knew to expect—that the material was classified, that the file concerned a living person, or that no file existed to begin with. Judging by the FBI's final response letter, there might have been a file on my subject, a long-deceased Mississippi lawyer name John R. Poole. But if there was, it got shredded.
From Federal Computer Week:
Having an effective presence on the Web is no longer as simple as putting up a home page and letting visitors do all the work to come to you. Many organizations now enhance their Web-based communications with various techniques to push news and fresh information out to interested recipients or seed links to the updates in places people frequent online.Many government agencies have been dabbling with these Web 2.0 tools for some simple tasks, such as sending occasional press releases. Now, taking a cue from some pioneering private-sector firms and a thriving interactive Web community, some agencies are looking at the tools as a way to conduct more frequent, and at times more critical, information exchanges with other agencies and groups and individuals outside government.
From The Florida Times-Union:
Simple solutions can sometimes ward off sticky problems.Exhibit A, in this case, is State Attorney Harry Shorstein's good call to change his policy of giving uncopied files to outside agencies.
Twice in the last three years, public access to files involving investigations disappeared when either the FBI or the U.S. Attorney's Office asked for documents from the State Attorney's Office and copies weren't made before handing them over.
The latest case involved records the State Attorney's Office gathered in a probe of the city's minority contracting program that has been making headlines as part of an FBI probe into the Jacksonville port.
The problem is the public can't view, obtain or read about records the office doesn't have. And the FBI - which is not subject to Florida's public records law - has refused to provide Shorstein the records he gave that agency in 2004 until its investigation is over.
From Federal Computer Week:
The Census Bureau might not get an additional $210 million as a result of a recent Senate vote.The Senate voted 77-21 June 26 to remove the emergency spending designation from the funding, essentially dropping it from the fiscal 2008 Supplemental Appropriations Act.
Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez had requested additional money for this fiscal year at an April 3 hearing before a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. He said the money would help offset the total cost of the 2010 census, which is estimated at $2.2 billion to $3 billion more than the original estimate, bringing the total to $14.5 billion. Some of that increase has been attributed to the Census Bureau's decision to make follow-up surveys paper-based rather using handheld computers.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who demanded the vote, argued that the $210 million could not be considered emergency spending. He blamed the rising costs on Census' mismanagement.