From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
From reading the official European Commission documentation on its proposed Copyright Term Extension Directive, one might believe perpetuating performer copyrights from 50 to 95 years in Europe is a charitable policy with no ill effects at all. That’s certainly how Commissioner Charlie McCreevy would like it to appear, as he pushes [...]
Archive of entries posted on January 2009
EU Copyright Extension: Help MEPs Hear the Other Side
GPO’s Authentification Efforts
From the GPO:
To help meet the challenge of the digital age, GPO has begun implementing digital signatures to certain electronic documents on GPO Access that not only establish GPO as the trusted information disseminator, but also provide the assurance that an electronic document has not been altered since GPO disseminated it.
The visible digital signatures on [...]
State funding for many public libraries on decline
ALA Press Release:
Forty-one percent of states report declining state funding for U.S. public libraries in fiscal year 2009, according to a survey of the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA) conducted by the American Library Association (ALA). Twenty percent of these states anticipate an additional reduction in the current fiscal year.
For additional information, please [...]
Feingold: New FISA Court Ruling Based on Incomplete Record
From Secrecy News:
When it upheld the constitutionality of warrantless intelligence surveillance under certain very particular circumstances in a ruling (pdf) that was disclosed last week, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review was acting on an incomplete factual record that may have skewed its decision, according to Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI).
Germany Announces Web Filtering Initiative
From Public Knowledge:
Following the Australian government’s recent foray into web filtering, last week, Slashdot reported that Germany’s Minister for Families, Ursula von der Leyen, has announced an initiative to force German ISPs to enforce a government-mandated “block list”. The list, which would be created and maintained by the BKA (the German equivalent of the FBI), [...]
Anti-porn online law dies quietly in Supreme Court
From the Associated Press:
A federal law intended to restrict children’s access to Internet pornography died quietly Wednesday at the Supreme Court, more than 10 years after Congress overwhelmingly approved it.
The Child Online Protection Act would have barred Web sites from making harmful content available to minors over the Internet. The law had been embroiled in [...]
Third-Party Content on New Whitehouse.gov Under Most Permissive Creative Commons Copyright License
WhiteHouse.gov Copyright Notice:
Pursuant to federal law, government-produced materials appearing on this site are not copyright protected. The United States Government may receive and hold copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise.
Except where otherwise noted, third-party content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Visitors to this website agree [...]
President Obama Moves to Openness on First Day
On his first full day in office, President Obama made open government advocates very happy by issuing an Executive Order on Presidential Records revoking Bush’s Executive Order 13233.
In addition, he released a memorandum instructing agency officials to adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure when examining FOIA requests. The Memorandum for the Heads of [...]
China closes 90 websites as internet crackdown intensifies
From the Guardian:
China extended its internet crackdown today, announcing that it had closed more than 90 websites as part of its campaign to eradicate vulgar and pornographic ¬material. But observers fear that the move signals the government’s determination to control the net amid a darkening economic outlook and a string of politically sensitive anniversaries.
Democrats sneak Net neutrality rules into ’stimulus’ bill
From CNet:
The House Democrats’ $825 billion legislation released on Thursday was supposedly intended to “stimulate” the economy. Backers claimed that speedy approval was vital because the nation is in “a crisis not seen since the Great Depression” and “the economy is shutting down.”
That’s the rhetoric. But in reality, Democrats are using the 258-page legislation to [...]