Part-Time Policy Wonk

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California (ACLU-Northern California) Tuesday filed a motion to intervene in a lawsuit where a federal judge ordered the disabling of one of the domain names associated with "Wikileaks," a website designed to give whistleblowers a forum for posting materials of public concern.

Posted by Anne at 08:33 PM | Permalink

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Imagine that every time you printed a document, it automatically included a secret code that could be used to identify the printer - and potentially, the person who used it. Sounds like something from an episode of "Alias," right?

Unfortunately, the scenario isn't fictional. In a purported effort to identify counterfeiters, the US government has succeeded in persuading some color laser printer manufacturers to encode each page with identifying information. That means that without your knowledge or consent, an act you assume is private could become public. A communication tool you're using in everyday life could become a tool for government surveillance. And what's worse, there are no laws to prevent abuse.

Posted by Anne at 08:32 PM | Permalink

From C-SPAN:

The C-SPAN Congressional Chronicle is an index to the C-SPAN video recordings of the House and Senate floor proceedings. The video recordings are matched with the text of the Congressional Record as soon as the Record is available. It only includes members who appeared on the floor to deliver or insert their remarks. The text included here is what the member submitted. Each appearance has a video link where users can watch and listen to the actual remarks.

Posted by Anne at 08:31 PM | Permalink

From the United Nations:

The UN E-Government Survey 2008: From E-Government to Connected Governance assesses the e-government readiness of the 192 Member States of the UN according to a quantitative composite index of e-readiness based on website assessment, telecommunication infrastructure, and human resource endowment. ICTs can help reinvent government in such a way that existing institutional arrangements can be restructured and new innovative arrangements can flourish, paving the way for a transformed government.

Download Publication

Posted by Anne at 08:29 PM | Permalink

From the National Security Archive:

At a hearing today before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, it was disclosed that the White House has received repeated warnings from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and from information technology experts within the White House about the risk of lost e-mails. Records obtained by the Committee showed that NARA's warnings began as early as January 2004 and that the White House was aware of the danger that e-mails may not be properly preserved. Further, testimony and evidence indicated that a new records management system was developed by the White House and NARA and then rejected by White House Office of Administration Chief Information Officer Theresa Payton in the fall of 2006, when the system was ready for implementation. The existing archiving process, which was installed as a temporary solution in 2002, was "primitive," according to a former White House technology expert in communications with the Committee.

Posted by Anne at 08:29 PM | Permalink

From the Mercury News:

Most of the world's Internet users lost access to YouTube for several hours Sunday after an attempt by Pakistan's government to block access domestically affected other countries.

The outage highlighted yet another of the Internet's vulnerabilities, coming less than a month after broken fiber-optic cables in the Mediterranean took Egypt off line and caused communications problems from the Middle East to India.

Posted by Anne at 08:28 PM | Permalink

From Public Knowledge:

Comcast’s defense of its indefensible practice of throttling BitTorrent rests on the definition of the word “block.” For such a big company, and for such a big industry, that’s not much of a defense. But at the point, it’s all they have. The question is whether it will be enough to save Comcast from being the test case that proved the need for a strong government presence to keep the Internet open and free from network control.

At the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) extraordinary hearing in Cambridge, Mass., yesterday (Feb. 25), FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said that companies can’t “arbitrarily block access to particular applications and services” and that any such blockage must be done in a way transparent not only to consumers but to applications developers. He said the Commission was “ready, willing and able to step in” if it found such a situation.

Posted by Anne at 08:27 PM | Permalink

From North Carolina State University Libraries News:

Members of the Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN) have announced that they are joining the Open Content Alliance (OCA) and other major research libraries in contributing to the freely accessible digital library hosted by the OCA. TRLN is a collaborative organization of the research libraries at Duke University, North Carolina Central University, North Carolina State University, and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

By partnering with the OCA, the TRLN libraries are ensuring that their online collections will remain open to scholars and all other members of the global community. Administered by the non-profit Internet Archive, the OCA represents the collaborative efforts of a group of cultural, technology, nonprofit, and governmental organizations from around the world that are helping to build a permanent archive of multilingual digitized text and multimedia content.

Posted by Anne at 08:25 PM | Permalink

From the Library of Congress Office of Strategic Initiatives:

OSI has just issued its Strategic Plan for the next six years. The plan is intended as a living document that will guide OSI as it develops programs, plans and strategies for the Library of Congress's digital future.

FY 2008 - 2013 Strategic Plan (PDF, 32.9 MB)

Posted by Anne at 08:24 PM | Permalink

From the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform:

At 10:00 a.m., on February 26, 2008, the Committee held a hearing entitled “Electronic Records Preservation at the White House.”

Chairman Waxman's Opening Statement (218 KB)

Good morning. Today’s hearing focuses on whether President Bush and the White House are complying with the Presidential Records Act. . .

. . . When President Clinton left office and President Bush came into office, the White House had in place a system for archiving White House e-mails that complied with the Presidential Records Act.

That's what makes the actions of the Bush Administration so inexplicable.

Posted by Anne at 08:21 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

President Bush's future presidential library and public policy institute will be housed at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, officials announced yesterday, launching a project that could require hundreds of millions of dollars in private donations.

Posted by Anne at 09:14 PM | Permalink

From the Open House Project:

The House Rules Committee is making legislation a little easier to follow online, by voluntarily posting updates of special rules, as they are approved, to their website in a structured format. This means that you can receive updates on newly approved special rules that structure floor consideration for impending bills. They’re also offering a feed of amendments submitted to the committee.

Posted by Anne at 09:13 PM | Permalink

From the EPA:

Information on the 2006 reporting year is now available as part of the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) database. Today marks the earliest release of the data in the 20-year history of the program. Improvements in electronic reporting and data processing have made this possible. Nation-wide chemical releases into the environment are down by two percent from 2005.

Detailed information about the 2006 reporting year is available at: http://epa.gov/tri/tridata/tri06/index.htm.

Posted by Anne at 09:11 PM | Permalink

From the U.S. Economic Indicators Web Site:

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economics and Statistics Administration (ESA) has decided to continue the economicindicators.gov website. Featuring the economic releases from ESA’s Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), the site was started by this Administration in 2002 to give greater awareness to these economic statistics. ESA initially planned to discontinue the service due to cost concerns but given the feedback ESA received, the decision has been made to continue the site and improve its functionality.

Posted by Anne at 08:59 PM | Permalink

From the Associated Press:

In a new challenge to President Bush's use of executive power, Senate Democrats want to make the government produce evidence for a judge to review when it claims disclosing such information would endanger national security.

The Senate Judiciary Committee's chairman is developing legislation aimed at reining in the administration's use of a state secrets privilege to argue for dismissing cases that might reveal misconduct.

Democrats contend the administration has used that tactic in cases involving suspected terrorists interrogated overseas and in the president's secretive surveillance program.

State Secrets Protection Act (S. 2533)

Posted by Anne at 08:57 PM | Permalink

From the New York Times:

A technical glitch gave the F.B.I. access to the e-mail messages from an entire computer network — perhaps hundreds of accounts or more — instead of simply the lone e-mail address that was approved by a secret intelligence court as part of a national security investigation, according to an internal report of the 2006 episode.

Posted by Anne at 08:56 PM | Permalink

From OMB Watch:

After significantly delaying the release of a report that identifies alarming toxic health risks for the Great Lakes region, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is now reportedly planning to release a substantially modified document.

Posted by Anne at 08:56 PM | Permalink

From OMB Watch:

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a report to Congress Feb. 14 that calculates the benefits of President Bush's 24 E-Government (E-Gov) Initiatives at approximately $508 million in Fiscal Year 2007, based on agencies' estimates. Congressional skepticism of the Initiatives, and subsequent reluctance to fund them, led OMB to develop a questionable funding mechanism using agency contributions from their annual budgets.

OMB released the report, Report to Congress on the Benefits of the President's E-Government Initiatives, as required by a section of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008 (Pub. L. No. 110-161).

Posted by Anne at 08:54 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

The Army will restore public access to the largest online collection of its doctrinal publications within two weeks, an Army spokesman said yesterday.

Col. Michael J. Negard said the Army "underestimated the impact" of its decision to make the Reimer Digital Library password-protected on Feb. 6, a move that shut off public access to an electronic archive that is popular with researchers for its wealth of documents on military operations, education, training and technology. Critics of the decision noted that most of the documents in the library had specifically been cleared for public release.

Posted by Anne at 08:18 PM | Permalink

From the Association of Government Accountants:

In January 2008, the Association of Government Accountants (AGA) commissioned a study by leading market research firm Harris Interactive, to conduct the first in a series of annual surveys of public attitudes to government transparency and accountability. The objective of this first survey was to establish a baseline understanding of public attitudes, concerning transparency and accountability progress—or the lack of it—which could be tracked annually. A secondary objective was to use the survey findings to raise the profile of this important issue and help to drive understanding of it among policymakers, government employees and the public. . .

. . . In this regard, a lack of government accountability and transparency undermines democracy and gives rise to cynicism and mistrust.

This result is reflected in the survey findings, which reveal deep dissatisfaction among the American public with both the availability of government financial information and the way it is delivered to the people. Much of this dissatisfaction has to do with issues of trust and a gap between what the public expects and what is actually delivered. The survey also captured information relating to how the public would use fiscal information, were it provided to them in a usable form.

Posted by Anne at 08:12 PM | Permalink

From the Council on Library and Information Resources:

The digitization of millions of books under programs such as Google Book Search and Microsoft Live Search Books is dramatically expanding our ability to search and find information. The aim of these large-scale projects—to make content accessible—is interwoven with the question of how one keeps that content, whether digital or print, fit for use over time.

This report by Oya Y. Rieger examines large-scale digital initiatives (LSDIs) to identify issues that will influence the availability and usability, over time, of the digital books these projects create. Ms. Rieger is interim assistant university librarian for digital library and information technologies at the Cornell University Library.

The paper describes four large-scale projects—Google Book Search, Microsoft Live Search Books, Open Content Alliance, and the Million Book Project—and their digitization strategies. It then discusses a range of issues affecting the stewardship of the digital collections they create: selection, quality in content creation, technical infrastructure, and organizational infrastructure. The paper also attempts to foresee the likely impacts of large-scale digitization on book collections.

Executive Summary
PDF Download (600 KB file)

Posted by Anne at 08:09 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

Two lawmakers have introduced legislation that would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or impairing Web content from competitors.

Representatives Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Chip Pickering, a Mississippi Republican, introduced the Internet Freedom Preservation Act last week. The bill says it is U.S. policy to "guard against unreasonable discriminatory favoritism for, or degredation of, content by network operators based upon its source, ownership, or destination on the Internet."

Internet Freedom Preservation Act, H.R. 5353

Internet Freedom Preservation Act, S. 215

Posted by Anne at 06:01 PM | Permalink

From the American Booksellers Association:

On Wednesday, February 13, the Colorado Senate Judiciary Committee ignored the pleas of booksellers and voted 4 - 2 to approve a bill that bans the sale to minors of books and magazines that are "harmful to minors." Matthew Miller, general manager of the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver and Highlands Ranch, Colorado, and Lisa Knudsen, executive director of the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association, addressed the committee before the vote to express concerns that the bill would have a chilling effect on the sale of material that is protected by the First Amendment for adults and older minors. The legislation was also opposed by the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) and other members of the Media Coalition, which submitted a memo detailing their objections.

Posted by Anne at 08:28 PM | Permalink

From the EurActiv Network:

The European Parliament urged member states to adopt newly drafted EU rules on copyright protection, introducing harmonised criminal sanctions across Europe for activities ranging from illegal downloading to the sale of counterfeit medicines.

Posted by Anne at 08:29 PM | Permalink

From The Dallas Morning News:

As the field of presidential hopefuls narrowed, Citizen Watchdog decided to examine the remaining candidates' records on open government.

Most say they would run an open government as president, but their records are mixed.

Posted by Anne at 08:35 PM | Permalink

From the Center for Democracy and Technology:

The Supreme Court today turned aside a legal challenge to the Administration's warrantless wiretaps, declining to review a lower court decision dismissing the case because the names of those being spied on are secret. "The Court's decision allows the government to avoid accountability for its actions, making it less likely that we'll ever get a legal ruling on whether the government's warrantless wiretapping program broke the law," said Gregory T. Nojeim, director of CDT's Project on Freedom, Security & Technology. "It's all the more critical now that Congress tighten the law to make sure judicial orders are required for surveillance in the future.

Posted by Anne at 08:34 PM | Permalink

From ResourceShelf.com:

The ARL guide, “The NIH Public Access Policy: Guide for Research Universities,” includes the following sections:

• Policy Overview
• Institutional Responses
• Retaining Rights
• How to Deposit
• Resources

The guide focuses on the implications of the NIH policy for institutions as grantees, although some information for individual investigators is included and links to further details are provided. The guide is helpful to a range of campus constituencies that may be involved in implementing the new policy, including research administrators, legal counsel, and librarians.

Posted by Anne at 08:32 PM | Permalink

From The Sudbury Star:

Nearly 16,000 Canadian authors will share in more than $9 million for the public lending of their books by Canadian libraries.

The Public Lending Right Commission announced the payments Thursday. The commission operates under the Canada Council for the Arts and issues payments every February.

The more libraries in which an author's eligible titles are found, the larger the payment, to a maximum of $2,681.

Posted by Anne at 08:30 PM | Permalink

From the Mercury News:

Weeklong discussions in India about the creation of online domain names entirely in languages other than English led to greater understanding but no major decisions, the chief executive of the Internet's key oversight agency said Friday.

At issue is a proposed "fast-track" mechanism for specific countries to get non-English suffixes - the ".com" part of Internet addresses. For example, many Internet users in China would like to see a Chinese-character equivalent of the ".cn" suffix.

Posted by Anne at 08:30 PM | Permalink

From the New York Times:

In a move that legal experts said could present a major test of First Amendment rights in the Internet era, a federal judge in San Francisco on Friday ordered the disabling of a Web site devoted to disclosing confidential information.

The site, Wikileaks.org, invites people to post leaked materials with the goal of discouraging “unethical behavior” by corporations and governments. It has posted documents concerning the rules of engagement for American troops in Iraq, a military manual concerning the operation of prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and other evidence of what it has called corporate waste and wrongdoing.

The case in San Francisco was brought by a Cayman Islands bank, Julius Baer Bank and Trust. In court papers, the bank claimed that “a disgruntled ex-employee who has engaged in a harassment and terror campaign” provided stolen documents to Wikileaks in violation of a confidentiality agreement and banking laws. According to Wikileaks, “the documents allegedly reveal secret Julius Baer trust structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion.”

On Friday, Judge Jeffrey S. White of the Federal District Court in San Francisco granted a permanent injunction ordering Dynadot, the site’s domain name registrar and Web host, to disable the Wikileaks.org domain name. That has the effect of making the site invisible to people looking for it by name. But the site itself remains available through its internet protocol address, as do ancillary sites run by Wikileaks in other countries, along with mirror sites run by third parties.

Posted by Anne at 08:28 PM | Permalink

From the Guardian:

When you're dealing with a flooding emergency in the middle of the worst drought for many years, the last thing you need is barriers to the sharing of geographical and meteorological information.

Yet that's the situation faced by Australia. The authorities' response is to consider the widespread adoption of Creative Commons licences for public-sector information.

Last month, the government of Queensland approved the use of Creative Commons, which allows free re-use of copyright material subject to certain conditions, as part of a new licensing framework. Meanwhile, the Commonwealth (federal) government is expected to give the green light to creative commons in a new set of guidelines for the management of the government's intellectual property.

Posted by Anne at 08:27 PM | Permalink

From the UK's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority:

The NDA has announced today that it will invest £8 million in plans to create the UK’s National Nuclear Archive (NNA) in Caithness, Scotland.

The NNA will potentially hold between 20 and 30 million digital, paper and photographic records primarily concerning the history, development and decommissioning of the UK’s civil nuclear industry since the 1940s. The money will be invested over three years and will help get the £20 million project off the ground.

Posted by Anne at 06:18 PM | Permalink

From Billboard.biz:

The European Union's internal market commissioner has given his unequivocal support to industry demands for an extension for the term of copyright on sound recordings.

Commissioner Charlie McCreevy said today he intends to propose an extension of the current 50-year term of protection to 95 years, a move intended to preserve the livelihoods of performers.

Posted by Anne at 06:05 PM | Permalink

From the Office of the United States Trade Representative:

After an extensive review of the areas identified in Part B above, USTR determined that although the processing of FOIA requests is working well, the operation can be improved. One of the first areas that we reviewed was the amount of time taken to search for responsive records. Responsive records are located in one of two buildings or in Archives. Documents are often held in at least three offices: geographic, functional and the General Counsel. For any request of documents that date back more than three years, the negotiator/ office director often must search USTR’s Archival files, a time-consuming exercise. We met with the White House Office of Administration Archivists to determine how the process could be centralized, streamlined and computerized. We arranged for a tour and briefing by the Council of Environmental Quality (CEQ) staff, a similar-sized office within the Executive Office of the President. We will continue to work with the archivists to improve our records management system.

Posted by Anne at 06:03 PM | Permalink

From SourceWatch:

The Superdelegate Transparency Project (STP) is a project of LiteraryOutpost.com, OpenLeft, DemConWatch and the Congresspedia community on SourceWatch.

The Superdelegate Transparency Project is the central gathering place for compiling primary and caucus results--Congressional district by Congressional district--for states that have to date held their races, and going forward until the Democratic nomination is secured. We are compiling the district-by-district results of the popular vote and pledged delegates, and then tracking these results against how superdelegates are currently pledged (or have publicly endorsed a candidate), and how they eventually vote. The aim of this project is to open up the Democratic nomination process, and to gauge what effect the superdelegates have on the nomination. Rather than hypotheticals at the end of this nomination process, we seek to make hard data available to all interested parties, including citizens, activists, journalists, bloggers, campaign staffers and people around the world who are following this U.S. election. This is the only project currently tracking this data at the district level.

Posted by Anne at 05:59 PM | Permalink

From the Mercury News:

A Democratic lawmaker on Wednesday proposed legislation to stop network providers from playing traffic cop on the Internet.

Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet, introduced the bill to promote the principle, known as "Net neutrality," of treating all Internet traffic equally.

Markey, who introduced similar legislation in 2006, said the bill doesn't regulate the Internet, only makes sure the rules of online engagement are fair. His spokeswoman said he wanted to defuse critics' arguments that the bill amounts to regulation, which she called inaccurate.

Posted by Anne at 08:15 PM | Permalink

From the Canadian Broadcasting Centre:

A who's who of powerful companies and business associations have banded together to push for less restrictive copyright reform, driving a stake into the heart of the federal government's argument for its new copyright bill.

The Business Coalition for Balanced Copyright, a group that includes Google, Yahoo, Rogers, Telus, the Canadian Alliance of Broadcasters and the Retail Council of Canada, among others, on Tuesday sent its stance on seven key copyright principles to Industry Minister Jim Prentice, Canadian Heritage Minister Josée Verner and several other cabinet ministers.

According to the document obtained by CBCNews.ca, the coalition wants any new copyright legislation to include measures that enshrine the rights of consumers to use in different ways the copyrighted material they buy, as well as companies in their daily business practices.

The group also said internet service providers should not be held liable for copyright violations that occur on their networks, and that Canada should put into place measures that prevent the highly punitive lawsuits seen in the United States.

Posted by Anne at 08:14 PM | Permalink

From Free Government Information:

Forbes has awarded EconomicIndicators.gov one of its “Best of the Web” awards. As Forbes explains, the government site provides an invaluable service to the public for accessing U.S. economic data:

This site is maintained by the Economics and Statistics Administration and combines data collected by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, like GDP and net imports and exports, and the Census Bureau, like retail sales and durable goods shipments. The site simply links to the relevant department’s Web site. This might not seem like a big deal, but doing it yourself -- say, trying to find retail sales data on the Census Bureau’s site -- is such an exercise in futility that it will convince you why this portal is necessary.

Yet the Bush administration has decided to shut down this site because of “budgetary constraints,” effective March 1.

Posted by Anne at 08:12 PM | Permalink

From Taxpayers for Common Sense:

Congress has cut earmarks by 23 percent from the record 2005 levels, according to a new groundbreaking analysis and database of congressional earmarks released today by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a national budget watchdog organization.

The database can be accessed at http://www.taxpayer.net/budget/fy08earmarks/fy08databasemain.html.

Posted by Anne at 08:11 PM | Permalink

GPO Press Release:

The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) joins the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and Federal Depository Libraries around the country to provide an online reference service to the American public. This unique free web based “Ask a Librarian” service will give the public an opportunity to ask librarians questions about government resources. An example of how this service works: with the current process in the Presidential elections, the public may have questions about the primaries, caucuses and Electoral College process. A librarian is available at http://govtinfo.org/ to answer those or any other questions about the government.

Posted by Anne at 08:18 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

Public access to the Reimer Digital Library, which is the largest online collection of U.S. Army doctrinal publications, has been blocked by the Army, which last week moved the collection behind a password-protected firewall.

But today the Federation of American Scientists filed a Freedom of Information Act request (pdf) asking the Army to provide a copy of the entire unclassified Library so that it could be posted on the FAS web site.

Posted by Anne at 08:18 PM | Permalink

From ResearchBuzz:

The state of Connecticut has put a database of over one million criminal convictions (dating back to January 1, 2000) online. Unlike some other states’ criminal conviction databases, this one also includes minor infractions like traffic offenses. You can search it at http://www.jud2.ct.gov/crdockets/SearchByDefDisp.aspx. Using it is free.

Posted by Anne at 08:17 PM | Permalink

From Inside Higher Ed:

Harvard University’s arts and sciences faculty approved a plan on Tuesday that will post finished academic papers online free, unless scholars specifically decide to opt out of the open-access program. While other institutions have similar repositories for their faculty’s work, Harvard’s is unique for making online publication the default option.

Posted by Anne at 08:15 PM | Permalink

From Public.Resource.Org:

Creative Commons and Public.Resource.Org announced today that the first revision of a substantial corpus of U.S. federal case law is available for download by developers. The files are all clearly marked with the new Creative Commons CCØ label, indicating that the contents are Works of the United States Government and are thus free of copyright or other restrictions for their dissemination and reuse.

Developers may access this information at the following URL: http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/

Today’s release covers all U.S. Supreme Court decisions and all Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 on. The release is equivalent to 1,858 volumes of case law in book form, a stack of books 348 feet tall.

Posted by Anne at 08:28 PM | Permalink

From the New York Times:

Publish or perish has long been the burden of every aspiring university professor. But the question the Harvard faculty will decide on Tuesday is whether to publish — on the Web, at least — free.

Faculty members are scheduled to vote on a measure that would permit Harvard to distribute their scholarship online, instead of signing exclusive agreements with scholarly journals that often have tiny readerships and high subscription costs.

Posted by Anne at 08:27 PM | Permalink

From the LibraryLaw blog:

Legislation embracing the Digital Promise proposal to establish the National Center for Learning Science and Technology Trust Fund as a pilot program (originally labeled “DO IT”, the Digital Opportunity Investment Trust) was passed by the House of Representatives by a wide margin on Thursday evening, February 7.

The proposal, which establishes the National Center for Learning Science and Technology (originally called DOIT) as an independent 501(c)(3) corporation within the Department of Education, was placed into H.R. 4137, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act, and passed by the House of Representatives on Feb. 7th!

Posted by Anne at 08:37 PM | Permalink

From the Times Online:

A former Chinese university professor who was dismissed after he founded a democratic opposition party, plans to sue Yahoo! and Google in the United States for blocking his name from search results in China.

Guo Quan, an expert on classical Chinese literature and the 1937 Nanjing massacre of Chinese civilians by Japanese troops, last week issued an open letter pledging to bring a lawsuit against Google after he discovered that his name had been excised in searches of its google.cn portal in China.

He told The Times that he had now found that the Chinese Yahoo! site had also blocked his name and he planned to bring actions against both companies.

Posted by Anne at 08:36 PM | Permalink