The most selfish thing about submitting a manuscript late is asking “When is it going to be out?” So I’ve been waiting quietly, rather than trouble Judi Lauber, who did an excellent job editing and managing the publication.

Ryan and Jessamyn each contributed a chapter, and I owe additional thank yous to the full chorus of voices that answered so many of my questions, participated in interviews, and generally made the book/journal/thing what it is.

The official announcement features a quote from Richard Stallman, the founding father of the Free and Open Source software movement.

In the 70s, computer users lost the freedoms to redistribute and change software because they didn’t value their freedom. Computer users regained these freedoms in the 80s and 90s because a group of idealists, the GNU Project, believed that freedom is what makes a program better, and were willing to work for what we believed in.

He’s speaking of software, code, but his words harmonize well with the founding purpose of libraries. A hundred years ago we embarked on a period of library construction unmatched in our previous history. We may mistakenly identify the period with the source of funding, Andrew Carnegie funded thousands, but Carnegie’s spoken belief that individuals could elevate themselves and build a stronger republic through libraries was alive in the zeitgeist.

Today, as the World Wide Web becomes ever more interwoven with the fabric of our fleshy lives, libraries have new roles and responsibilities. Just as we architected public libraries of brick and stone in the past, we must to build and support a public information architecture for the future. Open source software not only serves libraries’ immediate economic interests, such software is also aligned with the larger public mission and philosophy of libraries.

Yes, I’m a partisan, for both free — free as in free speech — and open source software and for libraries.

libraries, library, LTR, Library Technology Reports, F/OSS, open source, free software, freedom, lib20, library 2.0

This story in MIT Technology Review scares me.

Instead of letting all computers within the network communicate freely, Ethane is designed so that communication privileges within the network have to be explicitly set; that way, only those activities deemed safe are permitted. “With hindsight, it’s a very obvious thing to do,” McKeown says.

No matter how obvious it seems, it’s still a really bad idea. It’s hard to imagine a world without the internet now, which makes it especially easy to dismiss the critical features that made it possible. The internet was born and has thrived because of the very thing McKeown is trying to kill: freedom.

TCP/IP, the foundation protocol of the internet, has spurred innovation because of how open it is. Bruce Sterling’s Short History of the Internet explains how that freedom supported the network’s rapid, noting, “As long as individual machines could speak the packet-switching lingua franca of the new, anarchic network, their brand-names, and their content, and even their ownership, were irrelevant.”

And not only did TCP/IP allow the internet usage to explode the way it did, it supported the rush of innovation that made the internet useful. Ray Tomlinson, the inventor of email as we know it today, is reported to have said, “don’t tell anyone! This isn’t what we’re supposed to be working on,” when he introduced it to his friend.

Inventor of HTTP, HTML, the first web server, and browser, Tim Berners-Lee explains how that freedom helped make the World Wide Web possible:

When, seventeen years ago, I designed the Web, I did not have to ask anyone’s permission. The new application rolled out over the existing Internet without modifying it. I tried then, and many people still work very hard still, to make the Web technology, in turn, a universal, neutral, platform. It must not discriminate against particular hardware, software, underlying network, language, culture, disability, or against particular types of data.

Now imagine what might have happened if Ray had to ask the network administrators for permission for his new email application. How much longer would it have taken to develop? What if TimBL needed permission to play with this silly web idea?

I suppose I might take some comfort from Scott Mace, who screams“

Academics have to earn their pay somehow, and lately, a lot of them have once again been spending more time trying to reinvent the Internet than fixing our education system. I say that with a certain bitter memory from the dot-com bubble years, when so many academics (and ultimately, a short-lived boomlet of vendors) labored so long to bring ”smart“ networking to the masses. Guess what, it never happened.

But instead I see it as another example of the battle between anarchists and oligarchs as described by Siva Vaidhyanathan, and I’m afraid that, as with DRM, this conflict might tilt towards the established oligarchs, no matter how short sighted they may be.

Separately, and somewhat amusingly, Berlin and NYC want their own private internet, and Dan the Mennonite wants one too.

Nick McKeown, anarchistic, anarchists vs. oligarchs, bad idea, dumb networks, ethane, freedom, freedom vs. control, intelligent networks, internet, networks, private internet, tcp/ip

Karen forwarded mgarthoff’s Freedom, tagged: bush war election midterm iraq katrina on YouTube.

Freedom, bush, election, freedom, george bush, george w bush, iraq, katrina, mgarthoff, midterm, midterms, politics, video, vote, voting, w, war

I Am Not A Terrorist.

I AM NOT A TERRORIST.

I am not a terrorist.

Democracy Now!

Burning Patriotism!

air travel, Arabic, civil liberties, freedom, I am not a terrorist, security, t shirt, terrorism, transportation security administration, tsa, We will not be silent

Quite a while ago now, stepinrazor asked people to do some self-censorhip in a post in the Flickr Ideas forum. FlyButtafly quickly joined the discussion, noting that she’d encountered some material she found offensive in pictures from other Flickr members: “as I’m going through the pictures, one shows up of a protestor holding a sign with a vulgar statement on it.” Though she refused to identify what she saw that was offensive, she did note in a later post that she “would never take my child to a pro-abortion rally.”

Striatic was quick to point out that “it probably wasn’t a pro-abortion rally, it was a likely a pro-choice rally.” Adding:

it’s easy to respect your opinion .. and i’ll try not to mislable your morality .. but even if you think that pro-choice is a corrupt morality {it isn’t beyond debate}, could you please not mis-represent it?

Meanwhile, in a somewhat different thread of the same conversation, GustavoG asked:

But was it offensive? To whom? To what culture? To what subculture within what culture?

Are you aware of the fact that your own icon would be offensive in the Muslim world? Your face can be seen, without any attempt to cover it. Shouldn’t you be forced to label your icon as “may offend”, and therefore be made invisible to the public?

I’ve been trying to synthesize the resulting discussion into a short, meaningful post for over a year now, but what appeared in the Flickr forum was so rich that I’ve now simply decided to quote the best bits of it and let them stand on their own.

FlyButtafly, who had started the thread with a specific question shot back at GustavoG’s expansion of the issue:

your comment about the muslim culture was completely extraneous. It has nothing to do with the issue at hand. We aren’t talking about inane issues that have to do with specific religions, otherwise we could go on to say that you can’t post pictures of pigs because of Jews and muslims and seventh-day adventists, etc., or that we couldn’t show a steak because of hindus. C’mon, let’s please stay on topic.

Quas responded:

I think that was exactly Gustavo’s point, and I think it’s a good one. Obviously Flickr isn’t going to censor pig/steak photos, yet these could be considered offensive to some.

Any photo could be potentially offensive to any viewer [OK, an exaggeration, but bear with me] — it’s just a matter of drawing the line somewhere. And since everyone will draw the line at a slightly different place, it’s going to be very hard (or impossible) to please everyone.

FlyButtafly narrowed the question:

I don’t think anyone disagrees with what is pornographic. Or why don’t we just say “nudity” that way there’s no confusion? Is it offensive to state what is in the picture? And to be able to shield myself from that type of image?

fallsroad re-expanded it:

That statement has been the center of court cases, debates, and regulation since the beginning of the Republic, and will be until long after we are all dust.

Again, FlyButtafly:

It is asking if we could have an explicit “nudity/pornography” and “obscenity/vulgarity” flag. There’s not any ambiguousness about those flags. At least not for the pornography one. Here, if anyone doesn’t understand what that word means: Someone with little or no clothes on.

To which ///Alex leapt:

Someone with little or no clothes on… != Pornography

Is this a pornographic photo?

…And GustavoG added:

you’re asking for the built-in ability to filter the world according to what offends you, and even by one or two of the things that offend you. Let’s assume this is done — and then someone requests another set of flags and buttons and whatnot, this time to filter out some other kind content that you would not find to be objectionable. For example, a steak. (I’m assuming you don’t object to steaks.) What would you say then — “yes, the system should support filtering steaks out”? Or “”o, there is no need for that functionality because I don’t think steaks are objectionable“?

If the steak filter is implemented, next time someone will require yet another filter — e.g. ”I’m offended by improper punctuation, photos with title, comment or notes with improper punctuation should be filtered out“.

Once everybody is happy seeing the three or four remaining non-objectionable photos, how many flags, filters and buttons will be there?

Accusing people of bigotry is easy – one just has to type the words. Please consider what it means, if you think that what offends you should be implemented globally, but what offends others needn’t.

Finally, FlyButtafly:

Maybe I should have stated it this way: In the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA we have certain laws that have been approved by the majority for centuries about what should be allowed in the public square. If this were not true, then we would not have such things as indecency laws, we wouldn’t have a ratings system, and anyone could pretty much get away with anything.

Fallsroad quickly pointed out FlyButtafly’s concerns are matter of great public debate. For my part, I took issue with the suggestion that morality laws of any sort “have been approved by the majority for centuries” in the US.

Censorship became a matter of federal interest in the late 1800s as a result of agitating by Anthony Comstock who burned 15 tons of books in his crusade against perceived obscenity and immorality. Richard Zacks’ An Underground Education reports that Comstock’s furor was a result of his compulsive feelings of desire and self stimulation that accompanied the sight of such materials.

J. Edgar Hoover followed Comstock as America’s top obscenity cop, ordering his agents to deliver confiscated materials directly to his office where it would be placed in a vault accessible only to Hoover and a close friend (also from Zacks). But Hoover and the FBI found themselves on the losing side of a number of First Amendment decisions when the government tried to shut down Reuben Sturman’s publishing enterprise — a story well told in Eric Schlosser’s Reefer Madness.

It’s worth remembering that Last Tango in Paris, with Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider, was rated X when first released in 1973, the same year the popular press coined the term “porno chic” and Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door were playing in mainstream theaters.

The current state of obscenity laws is best credited to (failed banker and convicted felon) Charles Keating, who agitated tirelessly for the government to thoroughly regulate the publishing industry while turning a blind eye toward banking. His 1965 film, Perversion for Profit, attempted to link pornography to Communism and the decline of western civilization. The perils of other people’s moral bankruptcy, it would seem, outweighed the risk of Keating’s own business bankruptcy. Though many argue that it was a moral bankruptcy of a different sort, the latter resulted multiyear depression in large part brought on by the savings and loan scandal and precipitated by Keating’s felonious financial fraud.

The Reagan administration tried to strike out obscenity, but failed to establish the case that the state’s interest (however conflicted) in preventing adults from viewing their own choice of materials was superior to the First Amendment’s constitutional prohibition of state censorship.

In short, we Americans have never been unanimous in our feelings about obscenity. Indeed, the only decision that has withstood the test of time has been the our insistence on free speech.

Anthony Comstock, argument, Charles Keating, civil liberties, community standards, cultural imperialism, first amendment, flickr, free speech, freedom, J. Edgar Hoover, may offend, moral superiority, obscenity, porn, pornography

The ALA’s Intellectual Freedom folks came up with this Radical, Militant Librarian button (which I found in Library Mistress’ photostream):

In recognition of the efforts of librarians to help raise awareness of the overreaching aspects of the USA PATRIOT Act, the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) is offering librarians an opportunity to proudly proclaim their “radical” and “militant” support for intellectual freedom, privacy, and civil liberties.

Interesting, meaningful, but badly designed.

That’s why we should thank Erica, the Librarian Avenger, for coming up with a much better design, putting it on buttons and mugs and shirts (and more), and making it easier to get.

Kara says this design looks a bit like communist propaganda (in a good way), but imagine it in brass, wouldn’t it make quite a badge?

radical militant librarian, button, buttons, radical militant librarian button, radical militant librarian buttons, libraries, civil liberties, liberty, librarians, freedom, patriot act, usa patriot act, intellectual freedom

Copyfight is pointing to the EFF’s new Legal Guide for Bloggers. Most of the content is about liability, but it also addresses issues of access and privilege that are generally granted to journalists, election law, and labor law. From the introduction:

Whether you’re a newly minted blogger or a relative old-timer, you’ve been seeing more and more stories pop up every day about bloggers getting in trouble for what they post.

Like all journalists and publishers, bloggers sometimes publish information that other people don’t want published. You might, for example, publish something that someone considers defamatory, republish an AP news story that’s under copyright, or write a lengthy piece detailing the alleged crimes of a candidate for public office.

The difference between you and the reporter at your local newspaper is that in many cases, you may not have the benefit of training or resources to help you determine whether what you’re doing is legal. And on top of that, sometimes knowing the law doesn’t help – in many cases it was written for traditional journalists, and the courts haven’t yet decided how it applies to bloggers.

But here’s the important part: None of this should stop you from blogging. Freedom of speech is the foundation of a functioning democracy, and Internet bullies shouldn’t use the law to stifle legitimate free expression. That’s why EFF created this guide, compiling a number of FAQs designed to help you understand your rights and, if necessary, defend your freedom.

To be clear, this guide isn’t a substitute for, nor does it constitute, legal advice. Only an attorney who knows the details of your particular situation can provide the kind of advice you need if you’re being threatened with a lawsuit. The goal here is to give you a basic roadmap to the legal issues you may confront as a blogger, to let you know you have rights, and to encourage you to blog freely with the knowledge that your legitimate speech is protected.

Continue reading the EFF’s Legal Guide For Bloggers…

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