From Government Executive Magazine:
A group of senators has joined the fray over whether the Environmental Protection Agency should slow or stop a campaign to digitize materials in its technical libraries and close the facilities to agency researchers and the public.
On Friday, 17 Democratic senators and one Independent wrote to appropriators asking that EPA be directed, [...]
Archive of entries posted on November 2006
Senators call for delay in closing EPA libraries
Google warns against changes to Australian copyright law
From Yahoo! News:
Internet search-engine giant Google has warned that proposed changes to Australia’s copyright laws could drive the country back to “the pre-Internet era”.
The warning came in a submission to Australia’s senate on legislation Google said could open the way for copyright owners to take legal action against search engines for caching and archiving.
On Their Own Terms
On Their Own Terms: A Lexicon with an Emphasis on Information-Related Terms Produced by the U.S. Federal Government by Susan Maret, Ph.D., updated October 2006
On Their Own Terms is a lexicon of information–rich terms created by the U.S. legislative, regulatory, and policy process, and routinized by various branches of the U.S. government. These terms represent [...]
Open Access publishing in physics gains momentum
From Interactions.org:
Geneva, 3 November 2006. The first meeting of European particle physics funding agencies took place today at CERN to establish a consortium for Open Access publishing in particle physics, SCOAP3. This is the first time an entire scientific field is exploring the conversion of its reader-paid journals into an author-paid Open Access format.
The Value of the Public Domain
From the Institute for Public Policy Research:
This paper calls for a re-orientation of innovation and information policy. In our current paradigm, monopoly rights, in the form of intellectual property, displace all else from our thinking on this subject making access a peripheral issue.
According to Pollock, it is high time we restored the balance, in particular [...]
U.S. yanks Web site with reported nuclear secrets
From CNN:
The top U.S. intelligence official took down a government Web site with captured Saddam Hussein-era Iraqi documents after questions were raised whether it provided too much information about making atomic bombs.
In a statement Thursday night, a spokesman for National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said his office has suspended public access to the Web site [...]
GAO Probes EPA Library Shutdown
From the :
Society of Environmental Journalists
I can’t locate a permalink to this story, so just put the title in the search engine to pull up the whole story.
TipSheet item
Publication date: Nov. 3, 2006
The Government Accountability Office is now investigating why EPA is closing its libraries, after Congress members, EPA employees, open government groups, and the [...]
French Publishers Join Google Book Search Suit
From CIO News Alerts:
An association representing 400 French book publishers has joined La Martiniere Groupe in its lawsuit to stop Google from digitizing books for its Google Book Search service.
U.N. blasts Cisco, others on China cooperation
From News.com:
Delegates to a United Nations summit on Tuesday assailed Google, Cisco Systems, Microsoft and Yahoo for cooperating too closely with China, suggesting that new global regulations of free expression might be necessary.
The three-hour session on the second day of the summit returned to long-standing questions that have drawn the attention of human rights workers [...]
Report Suggests U.K. Consider Regulating Licensed Content
From Library Journal:
The British Academy, a national body for the advancement of humanities and social sciences, has released a report, sponsored by the European Commission, suggesting the application of copyright law in the United Kingdom may be inhibiting the work of scholars and offering ten “recommendations” for redress, including possible government regulation of licensing deals. [...]