From American Libraries Online:
As part of an unprecedented $448.7-million line-item veto of state funding, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush slashed a total of $5.8 million in grants to public libraries, pilot projects for library homework help and web-based high-school texts, and funding for a joint-use library in Tampa. Bush, whose term runs out in January 2007, [...]
Archive of entries posted on May 2006
Gov. Jeb Bush Vetoes Florida Library Appropriations
Appeals Court: Patriot Act’s Gag Provision Probably Unlawful
From American Libraries Online:
A federal appeals judge has criticized the FBI’s permanent ban on speech in terrorism investigations—the gag provision allowed by National Security Letters (NSLs) authorized by the USA Patriot Act—as probably unconstitutional in the light of recent congressional amendments to the law. Judge Richard Cardamone of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the [...]
House Panel Votes for Net Neutrality
From News.com:
A bill that seeks to prevent broadband providers from offering an exclusive high-speed lane for video and other services has taken a step closer to becoming law.
By a 20-13 vote Thursday that partially followed party lines, the House Judiciary Committee approved a bill that would require broadband providers to abide by strict Net neutrality [...]
Internet Users in Myanmar Face Third Day without Connection
From Yahoo! UK:
Internet users in Myanmar were experiencing a third day without web access after the military-ruled country’s already tenuous links to the online world were cut, service providers said.
Internet service providers were at a loss to explain the problem, and officials could not say if the connection was broken or if it had been [...]
New Informational Web Site: Library of Congress Web Capture
“The Library of Congress has just launched a Web site devoted to information about its program to capture and preserve historically important Web sites so that they can be accessed by future generations of users. The Library of Congress and libraries and archives around the world are interested in collecting and preserving content on the [...]
Travel Limitations on Floridian Scholars
Vox Bibliothecae reports:
The Florida Legislature passed a bill earlier this month that would prohibit faculty and students from public universities and community colleges from traveling to countries that the U.S. State Department has designated as sponsors of terrorism. At the present moment, those countries are Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. As the above [...]
Berners-Lee calls for Net neutrality
From News.com:
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web, has called for clear separation between Internet access and Internet content.
Speaking at the World Wide Web conference in Edinburgh on Tuesday morning, Berners-Lee gave his views on the growing battle over Net neutrality. . .
. . .Berners-Lee characterized the issue as a U.S.-only problem at present. “In Europe, [...]
FCC Will Not Probe Consumer Privacy Issues With NSA Actions
From the Wall Street Journal: (registration required)
The Federal Communications Commission won’t look into whether telephone companies violated consumer-privacy laws by allegedly sharing millions of phone records with the National Security Agency. Kevin Martin, the FCC’s Republican chairman, yesterday cited the “classified nature” of the NSA’s activities in explaining that his agency would be “unable to [...]
Folk Label Inks Deal With Internet Services
From the Wall Street Journal: (registration required)
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the non-profit record label of the Smithsonian Institution, has reached a deal to market all of its vast and eclectic library on Internet services like the iTunes Music Store. The development promises to bring to a wider audience seminal works by Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and [...]
AT&T Provided NSA With Power To Review All Internet Messages
From the Wall Street Journal: (registration required)
Documents unveiled in a lawsuit that privacy advocates filed against AT&T Inc. contain allegations from a former AT&T technician that the company allowed the National Security Agency to install equipment capable of examining “every individual message” on the Internet. In the documents, published yesterday by Wired.com, Mark Klein, the [...]