Part-Time Policy Wonk

From The Australian:

Sydney will this week host a heated international debate on the regulation of the internet, as its peak governance body resists pressure from Europe to become more independent of the US.

The private, non-profit body ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), which runs the internet's network address system under contract from the US government, will hold its triennial international meeting in Sydney this week.

About 1300 delegates representing up to 50 countries are expected to debate a request by the European Union last week to privatise ICANN and bring it under international supervision.

They will also discuss plans and proposals to make some of the biggest changes to the internet ever attempted.

Posted by Anne at 08:30 PM | Permalink

From Billboard:

The "three-strikes" saga continues in France following the Constitutional Council's recent decision canceling the sanction side of the bill, with the government attempting to find a way around the legal ruling.

While the educational part of the bill, which allows the administrative authority Hadopi to issue warnings to infringers, had been passed into law, a short new bill on the sanction side of the anti-piracy system has now been approved by government ministers to be introduced as legislation.

The French government had wanted Hadopi to be able to cut off repeat offenders after two warnings. With the Constitutional council having stressed that only a judge can rule on such terminations of Internet access, the new bill intends to simplify procedures to avoid French courts, which would slow the sanction process.

Instead, a judge would be allowed to rule through an "ordonnance pénale" (penal order), a process that avoids a hearing involving the presence of the person accused of copyright infringement. Only in the case of an appeal would a court hearing take place.

Under the new proposals, the cutting of Internet access would also be added to the sanctions the judge would be entitled to apply in cases involving counterfeiting in relation to intellectual property.

Posted by Anne at 08:13 PM | Permalink

ALA Press Release:

In the fourth of a series of reports regarding technology access in U.S. public libraries, the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Research & Statistics (ORS) is highlighting how public library technology supports public access and use of e-government information and resources. The issues brief draws from national data published in the Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study (www.ala.org/plinternetfunding). . .

. . . For more information or to download a copy of the issue brief, please visit http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/ors/plftas/Issues_Briefs.cfm.

Posted by Anne at 08:13 PM | Permalink

NARA Press Release:

On June 23, 2009, the Nixon Presidential Library will be opening approximately 154 hours of tape recordings from the Nixon White House recorded in January and February 1973 and consisting of approximately 994 conversations. The conversations cover topics such as the conclusion of a peace settlement between the United States and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the return of American POWs, President Nixon's second inauguration, the U.S. and Europe, the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, energy policy, the reorganization of the executive branch, and the first Watergate trial. The newly released recorded conversations will be made available on the web at www.nixonlibrary.gov. They will also be available at both the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, CA and at the National Archives College Park, MD facility.

Posted by Anne at 08:13 PM | Permalink

From Reuters:

The bottom line on Book Search is that if you want to construct doomsday scenarios about how Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin will partner with Dr. Evil to suddenly shut off our access to hundreds of years of knowledge, you can. But nothing we know about Google or about the book business gives us any indication we should expect that. A more likely scenario is that Google will give away so much of its content for free that, even after giving them 63 percent of its revenue, it may well return too little to writers and publishers. That would still leave the creators of the millions of out-of-print books that Google is scanning more than they get from their work now (zero!), but it would mean that eventually many will desert for better options.

We can worry about that when we get to it. Right now, though, it's not Google that's standing in the way of the advance of human knowledge. It's the Google bashers. Folks like Darnton might be worried about the effects that concentrating power in Google's hands will have on public access to books, but ask yourself this: In the past decade, who has done more for public access to knowledge. Harvard? Or Google? If you want to pick sides in this debate, that's what really tells you everything you need know.

Posted by Anne at 08:12 PM | Permalink

From the Financial Times:

The US has complained officially to China over its strict new internet censorship rules as tension builds over an issue causing consternation among international technology companies and Chinese internet users.

The development is a rare direct intervention by the US over internet freedom, which has steadily risen in importance as an issue between the two countries in recent years. US technology companies see it as a back-door way of keeping them out of the Chinese market. . .

. . . Silicon Valley began to argue for internet censorship to be treated as a trade issue three years ago after Google and Yahoo were publicly embarrassed over accommodations made with Beijing to be allowed to operate in China.

Posted by Anne at 08:12 PM | Permalink

From Billboard:

The Japanese parliament has passed an amendment to the existing Copyright Law that extends further protections to copyright holders and, for the first time, makes it illegal for private users to download copyrighted material that has been uploaded without the rights holders' permission.

The new statute will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2010 but contains several caveats that raise the question of how it will be enforced. The user must be aware that the files were illegally uploaded and the new law does not stipulate any fine or jail term for contravening it.

Posted by Anne at 08:12 PM | Permalink

From the Mercury News:

Britain's government pledged today to provide universal access to broadband Internet connections as part of a plan to spur the country's technology sector and boost the economy.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said today that high-speed Internet access has become as "indispensable as electricity, gas and water" for most of the public.

Posted by Anne at 08:11 PM | Permalink

From Stuff.co.nz:

InternetNZ has slammed moves to redraft a controversial section of copyright law, saying the Government is cutting corners and trying to impose a "broken remedy".

Section 92a would have obliged internet service providers (ISPs) to terminate the accounts of repeat copyright infringers "in reasonable circumstances", but was canned in March after opposition from critics who were concerned people could be cut off without proof of their guilt.

The Economic Development Ministry has set up a working group of intellectual property and internet law experts to develop policy proposals and questions for consultation with stakeholders over a three-week period from July.

The ministry will seek Cabinet approval for its policy for dealing with online copyright infringement in August, and anticipates a bill will be drafted in September or October.

Posted by Anne at 08:11 PM | Permalink

From The Globe and Mail:

Police will have sweeping new powers to collect information about Canadian Internet users without a warrant, and activate tracking devices in their cellphones and cars under legislation proposed by the Conservative government yesterday and criticized by privacy advocates as excessive.

If the government's latest shot at introducing “lawful access” legislation – something successive governments have tried but failed to do for the past decade or so – succeeds, Internet service providers will also be forced to install monitoring technology on their servers to keep track of their users' online activities.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson and Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan yesterday introduced two bills – the Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act and the Technical Assistance for Law Enforcement in the 21st Century Act – just before the House of Commons empties out until the fall session.

Posted by Anne at 08:10 PM | Permalink

From the Mercury News:

The Chinese government disabled some search engine functions on the Chinese-language Web site of Google on Friday, saying the site was linking too often to pornographic and vulgar content. Government officials met with managers of the Chinese operations of Google on Thursday afternoon to warn them that the company would be punished if the Web site was not purged of the offending material, according to a report Friday by Xinhua, the state news agency.

Posted by Anne at 08:10 PM | Permalink

From the Guardian:

Foreign policy can never be the same again — and it's all because of the internet, Gordon Brown said in an exclusive interview with the Guardian.

Referring to the so-called Twitter revolution in Iran, the prime minister said technological advances and the democratisation of information mean "foreign policy can no longer be the province of just a few elites".

Posted by Anne at 08:09 PM | Permalink

From cnet:

The Iranian government is trying to control the flow of information among protesters of the supposed results of that nation's presidential election, and to and from news organizations.

But, reports CBS News Science and Technology Correspondent Daniel Sieberg, Tehran is having difficulty stopping citizens from using technology to report what's happening, express outrage and get people out to opposition rallies.

Posted by Anne at 08:09 PM | Permalink

From the Wall Street Journal:

The Iranian regime has developed, with the assistance of European telecommunications companies, one of the world's most sophisticated mechanisms for controlling and censoring the Internet, allowing it to examine the content of individual online communications on a massive scale.

Interviews with technology experts in Iran and outside the country say Iranian efforts at monitoring Internet information go well beyond blocking access to Web sites or severing Internet connections.

Instead, in confronting the political turmoil that has consumed the country this past week, the Iranian government appears to be engaging in a practice often called deep packet inspection, which enables authorities to not only block communication but to monitor it to gather information about individuals, as well as alter it for disinformation purposes, according to these experts.

Posted by Anne at 08:09 PM | Permalink

MAPLight Press Release:

CFAC and MAPLight.org Win Public Access to California Database of Lawmakers' Votes The California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC) and MAPLight.org, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization that shows the connection between money and politics, announce today that they have settled their freedom of information lawsuit against the Office of Legislative Counsel of California, having gained the object of their suit: a machine-readable database of how state lawmakers vote. . .

. . . California legislative data, including how lawmakers vote, legislation in progress, and laws, was previously available to the public only in a plain-text format on the California Legislative Information website. That data was suitable for viewing and printing, but only allowed access to Legislative data at a rate of one bill at a time, making analysis lengthy and cumbersome. . .

. . . As part of the settlement agreement, which is effective today, CFAC and MAPLight.org agreed to dismiss their lawsuit and agreed that they will not re-file any similar suit so long as the Legislative Counsel maintains the recently-created "structured database" at the same useful functional level at which it exists today. The new database can be downloaded by any member of the public at http://www.leginfo.ca.gov.

Posted by Anne at 02:39 PM | Permalink

From the National Security Archive:

A report issued by the Air Force Audit Agency that was released to the National Security Archive this week identifies significant mismanagement in the Air Force Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) program. The findings demonstrate a pattern of noncompliance with statutory timeframes to respond to records requests from the public and misrepresentations about the state of the Air Force FOIA program.

Posted by Anne at 02:19 PM | Permalink

From Sunlight Foundation:

We've decided to do something crazy. On Tuesday afternoon, someone handed us a copy of the Recovery.gov 2.0 RFP and we thought: what if we try something truly radical here. What if we opened up the process of government contracting by bidding on this thing? We together-- not just we meaning The Sunlight Foundation-- are going to bid on redoing Recovery.gov to learn more about the process of government contracting, and to try and build what is perhaps the biggest federal transparency-related website.

We aren't government contractors. We've never done it before. We haven't a clue what we're doing. We don't even know if we're eligible. But who cares? We know we have a talented technical team here, and we know we have a great community of people around us. And we know we can do better than a lot of the government contracting establishment for a lot less money.

We need your help bidding on this and building a credible document. This is a short turnaround RFP -- it is due Friday, June 26th-- and together I think we can do something amazing. Let's write our response together, figure out what the best solution is, and give the Recovery board our ideal response.

Together (and that's the only way it is going to happen) we can make something amazing happen. We're taking our bid and opening it up for anyone to edit on the Sunlight Labs wiki.

Posted by Anne at 02:18 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

The CIA is pushing the Obama administration to maintain the secrecy of significant portions of a comprehensive internal account of the agency's interrogation program, according to two intelligence officials.

The officials say the CIA is urging the suppression of passages describing in graphic detail how the agency handled its detainees, arguing that the material could damage ongoing counterterrorism operations by laying bare sensitive intelligence procedures and methods.

Posted by Anne at 02:17 PM | Permalink

From the Local Open Government blog:

The First Annual "Open Government Year in Review 2008-2009" is now available for download. The Year in Review collects articles on case developments and other open government issues during the last year.

Posted by Anne at 02:17 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

President Obama has embraced Bush administration justifications for denying public access to White House visitor logs even as advisers say they are reviewing the policy of keeping secret the official record of comings and goings.

In recent days, the Secret Service has rejected requests from two organizations for the logs, which document the West Wing meetings that have helped shape Obama's policies on banking regulation, economic recovery, foreign policy and the auto industry.

Yesterday, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration seeking the release of information about the visits of coal company executives. Also yesterday, MSNBC.com reported that its broader request for logs since Jan. 20 had been denied.

Posted by Anne at 02:16 PM | Permalink

From CNN:

The Senate passed by unanimous consent Wednesday a bill (S. 1285) that would prevent the release of controversial photos of alleged U.S. abuse of prisoners and detainees.

The bill, sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut Independent, and Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, had originally been part of the war funding supplemental bill passed Tuesday by the House.

But House Democrats stripped that part of the measure from the bill, and the senators proposed it as stand-alone legislation.

Posted by Anne at 02:15 PM | Permalink

From Newsweek:

As a senator, Barack Obama denounced the Bush administration for holding "secret energy meetings" with oil executives at the White House. But last week public-interest groups were dismayed when his own administration rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama's "clean coal" policies. One reason: the disclosure of such records might impinge on privileged "presidential communications." The refusal, approved by White House counsel Greg Craig's office, is the latest in a series of cases in which Obama officials have opted against public disclosure.

Posted by Anne at 02:15 PM | Permalink

From OpenCongress.org:

The RaceTracker project on the OpenCongress wiki tracks every election for the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives and state governor. RaceTracker is a free, open-source, fully-referenced, and non-partisan public resource. It is coordinated by the crew at the SwingStateProject.

Here's what you can find:
• Candidates for each seat and their status
• Campaign contribution information
• District maps, past election results, and more

Posted by Anne at 02:10 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

The controversial idea of the “unitary executive” in which all executive power is vested in the President of the United States may be a coherent legal theory. But in reality, things don’t happen within the executive branch simply because the President commands them. In practice, what we have is a “fragmentary executive” the efficacy of which is entirely dependent on the competence and the good faith of thousands of officials who must consciously choose to implement the declared policies of the Administration.

With that in mind, it is noteworthy that the Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, reiterated and endorsed the President’s Freedom of Information Act policy in a memorandum (pdf) to senior Energy Department officials this month.

Posted by Anne at 02:09 PM | Permalink

From the Topeka Capital-Journal:

Millions of files containing detailed information about U.S. immigrants — including their spouses' names, as well as personal photographs and letters — will soon become available to the public through a federal facility in suburban Kansas City.

Historians and others say the records, called Alien Registration files, or A-files, provide insight on immigrants who arrived in the U.S. after 1944. Long considered temporary files by U.S. immigration officials, the documents could have been destroyed after 75 years.

Posted by Anne at 02:09 PM | Permalink

From Sunlight Labs:

For those of you keeping an eye on the ball, working hard on your Apps for America 2 entries, I've got some great news for you: Data.gov has given itself a slight upgrade, adding a bunch more feeds. To compensate, Data.gov has turned itself into three subcatalogs: A raw data catalog, a tool catalog and a geodata catalog.

Posted by Anne at 02:08 PM | Permalink

From Boing Boing:

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,

"You may remember the FedFlix program from Public.Resource.Org. We got the National Technical Information Service (NTIS), a part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, to send a couple dozen videotapes every month. We digitized the tapes, and sent them back to the government with a DVD. No cost to .gov, and we got public domain data to post as high-res stock footage, plus great casual viewing on YouTube and the Internet Archive. The program went well for a year, the DC folks were happy, and I'm pleased to say we were able to renew the Joint Venture, but with a twist. They're now sending a minimum of 100 tapes a month and we have rights to all 6,000 masters in their warehouse.

We put all our video in 3 places (some copies still updating or sorting):

1. YouTube (link)
2. Internet Archive (link)
3. bulk.resource.org, available for FTP and rsync as well as http. (link)

Posted by Anne at 02:07 PM | Permalink

From the New York Times:

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised that once a bill was passed by Congress, the White House would post it online for five days before he signed it. . .

. . . Five months into his administration, Mr. Obama has signed two dozen bills, but he has almost never waited five days. On the recent credit card legislation, which included a controversial measure to allow guns in national parks, he waited just two.

Posted by Anne at 02:06 PM | Permalink

From Federal Computer Week:

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has developed a homegrown social-networking application that provides all NASA employees with the types of features found in Facebook but in a secure environment.

Spacebook, which offers user profiles, group collaboration tools and social bookmarking, is available through NASA’s intranet, according to Linda Cureton, Goddard’s chief information officer, who announced the launch, appropriately enough, on her blog.

Posted by Anne at 02:06 PM | Permalink

From Sunlight Foundation:

Reps. Baird and Culberson introduced legislation today that would shine more sunlight on the most fundamental work of Congress. Their bill, H. Res. 554, would require that all non-emergency legislation be posted online, in its final form, 72 hours before consideration. The bill is not a panacea for all that ails Congress, but if enacted, it will stave off many congressionally created debacles before they become law.

Posted by Anne at 02:05 PM | Permalink

From the White House blog:

Last week, Vivek Kundra and Katie Stanton talked about the efforts underway to introduce more Web 2.0 technologies to the federal government sites and to open more back-and-forth communication between the American people and the government. Some of this naturally requires the adoption of new approaches and innovative technologies. But another big part of this is updating existing practices and how these tools can be used to break down barriers to communication and information.

We continue to ask for your feedback, but the best feedback is informed feedback. So what follows is background on current policies and some examples of what we’ve heard from you during the Brainstorming phase of our outreach.

Posted by Anne at 02:04 PM | Permalink

From Library Journal:

Trying to close a $3.2 billion gap by June 30, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland today proposed “resiz[ing] state government in line with the shrinking economy,” prioritizing “extremely limited resources toward critical health and safety service,” and—though not saying so in his speech—severely cutting library aid.

Libraries in Ohio uniquely rely on state aid, rather than predominantly on local support. They are funded through 2.22% of the state’s total general tax revenue.

Just before Strickland’s press conference, his budget director told Lynda Murray of the Ohio Library Council (OLC) that the proposal would cut the Public Library Fund by $227.3 million—nearly 50 percent—over the biennium budget. “I do not believe that many of our library systems, especially those without local levys, can remain open with those cuts,” commented Murray, in a message circulated on the American Library Association Council electronic mailing list.

Posted by Anne at 02:02 PM | Permalink

From the Detroit Free Press:

The City of Detroit has been spending property tax money intended for Detroit Public Library employees' benefits on city operations instead, a library official said Friday. . .

. . . The library is a separate municipal corporation from the city with a dedicated millage that provides most of its $48-million annual budget.

On Friday, Library Commissioner Jonathan Kinloch said library staff learned this week that the city spent $6.2 million in property tax money that was supposed to go to the library, dating back to July 1.

Posted by Anne at 02:02 PM | Permalink

From the ABA Journal:

The Library of Congress intends to compile all tweets about U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor during the confirmation process.

Posted by Anne at 02:01 PM | Permalink

From Time:

Critics of Google's book-searching agreement with publishers and authors were cheered last week when antitrust regulators in the Justice Department set their sights on the search giant's publishing deal, demanding more information.

Posted by Anne at 02:01 PM | Permalink

From cnet:

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was coy about exactly why he isn't thrilled with Google's attempt to forge its way into the digital publishing business.

"We have strong opinions about that issue which I'm not going to share," Bezos said to interviewer Steven Levy at the Wired Business Conference. "But, clearly, that settlement in our opinion needs to be revisited and it is being revisited."

Posted by Anne at 02:00 PM | Permalink

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Depending on whom you ask, Google’s Book Search book-scanning project lays the foundation for a universal, digitized library or creates a dangerous monopoly on information. The Chronicle sat down with Adam Smith, director of product management at Google, to talk about Book Search, the proposed settlement in the authors-and-publishers lawsuit against it, what it means for academic authors and researchers and so-called orphan works, and fears of a Google monopoly. Listen to a podcast of the conversation.

Posted by Anne at 02:00 PM | Permalink

From cnet:

Google, the company best equipped and most motivated to digitize the world's books, wants to offer the world an online Library of Alexandria. The decisions of the Justice Department, authors, book publishers, a federal judge, and Google itself likely will determine whether the company actually does.

Nobody in recent years has accused Google of lacking ambition, but its Google Book Search project is certainly among the company's top projects when it comes to chutzpah. That's not just because of the technical and financial hurdles of scanning, indexing, and displaying online millions of books, it's also because of the tangled intellectual property and legal concerns involved in the controversial project.

Posted by Anne at 01:59 PM | Permalink

From Library Journal:

In A Guide for the Perplexed Part II: The Amended Google-Michigan Agreement, attorney Jonathan Band, a consultant to the American Library Association (ALA), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), has updated his analysis of the controversial Google Book Search settlement, focusing on the arbitration and other opportunities unveiled in the agreement signed last month by the University of Michigan, a pioneer partner in Google’s scan plan.

Posted by Anne at 01:59 PM | Permalink

From TeleRead:

German publishers and book sellers have passed a strong resolution against the Google settlement:

http://www.boersenblatt.net/326041/

Here’s a rough translation of the summary:

The German publishers, booksellers and booksellers intermediate appeal to the chancellor, “deal with the protection of intellectual property to be personally”. At its Annual Meeting in Berlin, the Association members adopted a resolution today that a global approach to the development of copyright law demands - and support the fight against Google Book Settlement.

Posted by Anne at 01:58 PM | Permalink

From Library Journal:

The debate over Open Access (OA) has typically been the domain of faculty and administrations, taking place near the pinnacle of academia's ivory tower. But last week the American Medical Student Association and other student groups, brokered by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), weighed in from below with their own "Student Statement on the Right to Research."

In the statement, students call upon faculty, researchers, and funding groups (including governments) to support Open Access principles in order to remove "barriers for scholarly and educational re-use" of research materials.

Posted by Anne at 01:57 PM | Permalink

From Sparc Europe:

New mandates requiring researchers to make their papers available in open access have been announced in Belgium, Norway, and the UK

A trend in 2009 has been the accelerated progress in institutions, funders, and governments adopting mandates that require researchers to make copies of their papers available in open access ('green' open access).

Details of all existing mandates can be found at ROARMAP.

Posted by Anne at 01:57 PM | Permalink

From Access Info Europe:

12 European countries - Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Hungary, Lithuania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Norway, Serbia, Slovenia, and Sweden - today became the first states to sign the world’s first treaty on access to information; the Council of Europe Convention on Access to Official Documents at a meeting of Ministers of Justice held in Tromso, Norway.

Access Info Europe, a human rights group dedicated to promoting open government, welcomed the leadership shown by these 12 countries, and called the Council of Europe’s other 35 member states to demonstrate their commitment to government transparency by signing and ratifying the Convention.

Posted by Anne at 01:55 PM | Permalink

From eWeek:

China has begun blocking Chinese-language search engine results deemed pornographic and is calling on Google to do more to combat explicit content. Google says it has met with government officials there to address the controversy. China's move follows weeks of controversy over its decision to include Web filtering software with all PCs sold in the country starting next month.

Posted by Anne at 01:55 PM | Permalink

From the BBC:

The Egyptian culture ministry has agreed to publish Arabic translations of two novels by Israeli writers.

The decision comes in the wake of recent criticism of Culture Minister Farouk Hosni, who is bidding to become the next head of Unesco.

When asked about Israeli books in Alexandria library last year, the minister said that if they existed, he would burn them himself.

Posted by Anne at 01:54 PM | Permalink