Who are the pirates?

Cory Doctorow takes a different look at who the pirates are in today's publishing environment in his talk How to Destroy the Book, transcribed for the Varsity by Jade Colbert.

There is also a nice insight into the symbolic value of books in our culture:
"If you’re making a short film, and you want to illustrate a society that’s falling into tyranny, you can just cut away to a scene of a pile of books burning, and everyone will know exactly what you meant."

Barbara M. Jones named new Director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom

From the official release:

Please join ALA in welcoming Barbara M. Jones, Director, ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom, and Executive Director, Freedom to Read Foundation, effective December 14, 2009. In her letter of application, Barbara noted: “Twenty-first century IF issues are evolving quickly from those of the twentieth, due to the following: globalization of intellectual freedom issues; technology and privacy concerns; and an increasingly contentious civic discourse as witnessed in the recent health care Town Meetings…New intellectual freedom issues will need to be articulated in terms of our unchanging IF ideals – to the ALA membership, the general public, and to the organizations with which ALA collaborates.”

Barbara Jones brings a rich background in library administration, scholarship and intellectual freedom advocacy to this position. From 2003-2009 she was the Caleb T. Winchester University Librarian and Deans’ Council Member at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT. She held previous library directorships at Union College, the University of Northern Iowa, and the Fashion Institute of Technology (SUNY), as well as administrative positions at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), Minnesota Historical Society, New York University and Teachers College Library, Columbia University.

In 1995, Barbara Jones received a Ph.D, in U.S. Legal History, from the University of Minnesota/Twin Cities. She also holds an M.A. in History, Archival Management, and Historical Editing from New York University; an M.L.S. from the Columbia University School of Library Service; an M.A.T. in English from Northwestern University; and, a B.A. in English from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Barbara brings twenty-five years of active engagement on intellectual freedom issues to her new position. She currently serves as Treasurer, Freedom to Read Foundation. She served on the FAIFE (Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression) IFLA Standing Committee, serving as Secretary to FAIFE from 2007-2009. She was a member of the ALA Intellectual Freedom Committee (1990-1994, 2001-2003) and currently serves on the IFC Privacy Subcommittee (2009). In 2004-05 (and 1986-87) she served as Chair of the Intellectual Freedom Round Table. She is currently an ACRL Legislative Advocate and has also served on state Intellectual Freedom Committees in Iowa and Minnesota. As a FAIFE trainer and expert advisor, Barbara has developed curricula and training programs, and conducted workshops internationally.

In addition, Barbara has consulted, spoken and written extensively in the area of intellectual freedom. In 2009, she published Intellectual Freedom in Academic Libraries with ALA Editions. Earlier writing includes Libraries, Access, and Intellectual Freedom: Developing Policies for Public and Academic Libraries (ALA Editions, 1999) and a number of articles and chapters, including “Libel Tourism: What Librarians Need to Know,” for American Libraries (2009-2010).

Barbara Jones received the Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award from the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science in 2008. She was named to the Freedom to Read Foundation Honor Roll at their 30th anniversary gala in 1999.

Thanks go to the members of the search committee for a successful effort: Kenton L. Oliver, president, Freedom to Read Foundation; Martin L. Garnar, 2009-2010 chair, ALA Intellectual Freedom Committee; Mario Ascencio, 2009-2010 chair, ALA Committee on Legislation; J. Douglas Archer, 2008-2009 chair, ALA Intellectual Freedom Committee; Mary Taylor, executive director, Library and Information Technology Association; Karen O’Brien, director, ALA Office for Accreditation; Cynthia Vivian, director, ALA Human Resources; and, Mary Ghikas, senior associate executive director, ALA.

Congratulations, Barbara! All of us in the IFRT look forward to working with you!

Yale Press Muhammad cartoon incident Inspires anti-censorship call to action

In response to incidents such as Yale University Press' decision to remove all cartoons of Muhammad from a book about those cartoons, the National Coalition Against Censorship, the American Association of University Professors, and numerous other groups have issued a statement of principle and call to action that concludes

The incident at Yale provides an opportunity to re-examine our commitment to free expression. When an academic institution of such standing asserts the need to suppress scholarly work because of a theoretical possibility of violence “somewhere in the world,” it grants legitimacy to censorship and casts serious doubt on their, and our, commitment to freedom of expression in general, and academic freedom in particular.

The failure to stand up for free expression emboldens those who would attack and undermine it. It is time for colleges and universities in particular to exercise moral and intellectual leadership. It is incumbent on those responsible for the education of the next generation of leaders to stand up for certain basic principles: that the free exchange of ideas is essential to liberal democracy; that each person is entitled to hold and express his or her own views without fear of bodily harm; and that the suppression of ideas is a form of repression used by authoritarian regimes around the world to control and dehumanize their citizens and squelch opposition.

To paraphrase Ben Franklin, those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, will get neither liberty nor safety.

The full statement is available here.

December 1st Deadline for IFRT Awards

There is still a little time left to nominate someone for one of the IFRT awards:

John Phillip Immroth Memorial Award
Established in 1979, upon the death of John Phillip Immroth, this award honors the courage, dedication, and contribution of a living individual or group who has set the finest kind of example for the defense and furtherance of the principles of intellectual freedom. The award consists of a citation and a $500 prize.

John Phillip Immroth was a teacher, author, scholar, advocate, and defender of First Amendment rights. He was the founder and first Chair of the Intellectual Freedom Round Table in 1976. His impact on the ideal of intellectual freedom and its practice was great.
Nomination Form

Eli M. Oboler Award
In the words of the ALA Memorial Resolution for Eli Oboler, passed at the 1983 Annual Conference, Eli "served the library profession with the highest distinction, as University Librarian at Idaho State University for over three decades, as member of ALA Council from 1951 to 1959 and again from 1977 to 1981, as president of the Pacific Northwest Library Association,... as president of the Idaho Library Association," and, most significantly, as "one of the profession's most eloquent champions of intellectual freedom... as a member of the Intellectual Freedom Committee, as chair of the Intellectual Freedom Round Table, and as a founder and vice-president of the Freedom to Read Foundation." He was our "loyal gadfly," who "constantly and impatiently demanded the dismantling of all barriers to freedom expression."

His principal means of pursuing this noble task was his writing; he was prolific and eloquent author of hundreds of articles, reviews, and books, many of which have been and are destined to remain widely influential. In the spirit of this achievement, this award is to be granted to what the selection committee judges to be the best published work in the area of intellectual freedom to appear in the two-year period ending in the December prior to the Annual Conference at which the award is granted. The award consists of a citation and a $500 prize.
Nomination Form

SIRS/ProQuest Award
The IFRT State and Regional Achievement Award is presented to the state intellectual freedom committee, state educational media association intellectual freedom committee, state or regional intellectual freedom coalition, legal defense fund or other such group, that has implemented the most successful and creative intellectual freedom project during the calendar year. The award may also be presented for on-going or multi-year projects. It consists of a citation and a $1000 prize.
Nomination Form

Midwinter Schedule

Coming to Midwinter? Here's the schedule for IFRT events:

IFRT I
Saturday, 1/16, 1:30 pm - 3:30 pm
Boston Convention and Exhibition Center - Room 254 A/B

IFRT Program Committee Meeting
Sunday, 1/17, 11:30 am - 12:30 pm
Boston Convention and Exhibition Center - Room 254 A/B

IFRT II
Monday, 1/18, 8:00 am -10:00 am
Boston Convention and Exhibition Center - Room 104C

If you haven't been to IFRT Midwinter meetings before, these are business meetings to discuss the operation of the Roundtable. They are a great way to meet people in the IFRT and find opportunities to get more involved with the organization.

See you there!

Valparaiso University celebrates Banned Books Week

Valparaiso University’s Christopher Center for Library and Information Resources held its second annual Banned Books Readout in celebration and support of ALA’s Banned Books Week.

Four members of the Valparaiso University community – including Dean of Libraries Richard AmRhein – read from books that had been banned or challenged in the previous year.

In commenting on the importance of ALA’s recognition of books that have been banned or otherwise challenged, Dean AmRhein, who read an excerpt from And Tango Makes Three, said, “In this country, it is one of our most basic rights to freely access all points of view on any topic. The Banned Books Readout event is a reminder to all that while not everyone will agree the ideas presented, the author has the right to express them and the reader has the right to hear and consider them.”

Congratulations to the new Slate of IFRT officers!

Congratulations to the newly elected slate of IFRT officers!

VICE-CHAIR/CHAIR-ELECT:LOIDA GARCIA-FEBO

TREASURER:PAUL BEAVERS

DIRECTOR-AT-LARGE: ROSEANNE M. CORDELL & SHARON MCCASLIN

COUNCILOR:JOHN A. MOORMAN

Fahrenheit 451 as a graphic Novel

Publishers Weekly is reporting "a graphic translation” of Ray Bradbury's classic. The new book will be "created by artist Tim Hamilton, overseen by Ray Bradbury himself and supported by an elaborate marketing campaign that will peg the book to the American Library Association's Banned Books Week in September as well as a host of educational, book trade and comics industry events and promotions."

Freedom to Read Foundation Gala

Freedom to Read Foundation celebrates 40 years with a gala dinner and celebration Sunday, July 12th, in Chicago. Buy tickets now by calling (800) 545-2433 x4226.

Social Networking Safety Act

Proposed New Jersey Social Networking Safety Act, designed to protect children from cyber bullying and sexually explicit content, raises IF and many other issues.

Essentially, the act would require sites such as Facebook and MySpace to provide prominent links for users to report offensive content, and to investigate and report to law enforcement where appropriate.

The site itself is entitled to $1000 in damages from anyone posting a 'sexually offensive communication' to or about a minor in New Jersey.

Traditional Cultural Expression

ALA Office for Information Technology Policy released a draft statement on Traditional Cultural Expressions that has raised some concerns among IFRT members:

Librarianship and Traditional Cultural Expressions: Nurturing Understanding and Respect

Google Book Settlement

Google Book settlement “may compromise fundamental library values, such as privacy and intellectual freedom,” according to Dr. Alan Inouye of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Technology Policy.

Read the American Libraries Article about some of the objections.

There is also an overview of the settlement from ALA and ARL: A Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries and the Google Library Project Settlement, by Jonathan Band, JD.


The text of the proposed settlement is available here.

#AmazonFail: Amazon gets burned on filtering; lesson learned?

Amazon got a quick lesson in the problems that accompany filtering recently, as their attempt to make search results inoffensive offended and outraged thousands of people. Amazon hasn’t yet made it clear whether they intend to abandon filtering altogether, or simply try to fix their process.

In case you missed it, Amazon has been classifying certain books as ‘adult products.’ An Amazon customer service rep explained via email to author Mark R. Probst that “[i]n consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude ‘adult’ material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using
sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.”

In February, Craig Seymour noticed that his memoir of being a stripper in gay clubs in Washington, D.C. was no longer showing up in searches, and had its sales rank removed. While his title was eventually restored, by April 12th over 50, 000 books had been impacted, including Brokeback Mountain, Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, Heather Has Two Mommies, and False Colors The fact that books of Playboy centerfolds and memoirs of straight sex workers were not impacted led many to conclude that gay and lesbian titles were specifically targeted. In fact, the top results for searches on the keyword ‘homosexuality’ were titles on preventing and curing homosexuality. News spread like wildfire around the Internet over the weekend, most notably via hundreds of twitter messages a minute tagged #AmazonFail – now a synonym for the whole incident.

In a statement that was not at all reassuring for people concerned with filtering, Amazon spokesperson Drew Herdener asserted that it was not just homosexuality that was targeted, but also material in categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. Indeed books like The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability were also reportedly affected.

Ultimately, Amazon faulted employee error in conflating the concepts of ‘adult,’ ‘erotic, and ‘sexuality’ causing books to inappropriately be removed from rankings and search results.

While this explanation satisfies some who were worried about an anti-gay agenda at Amazon (and doesn’t satisfy others who see many unanswered questions), it still leaves open the idea that some books that Amazon sells are appropriately filtered from sales ranks and recommendation features.

Libraries learned long ago that attempts to narrowly filter a category of material that someone finds offensive quickly winds up blocking access to materials that virtually everyone agrees should not be filtered. Obviously, Amazon does not have the ethical responsibilities of a library. That’s why libraries remain more interesting and more integral to democratic society than bookstores. But while Amazon certainly has the right to limit its selection, search results, and recommendations by any criteria it wishes, much of its appeal is that Amazon can carry everything, unlike a physical bookstore that is limited by space concerns. If Amazon sabotages its own search and recommendation systems, it looses much of that appeal.

It is unclear why Amazon would need to filter ‘adult’ products. Customers are required to be adults, and it seems that a truly explicit thumbnail image of product description would be rare enough to be handled on a case by case basis.

Amazon should, in consideration of their entire customer base, offer full search and discovery options for all the products they sell. -David Hurley

Sir John Clifford Mortimer, CBE, QC (21 April 1923 – 16 January 2009

Though best known in the US for the PBS TV program Rumpole of the Bailey, John Mortimer was much more than a witty author of British crime stories. As a English barrister, Mortimer provided the defense in several major British free speech trials, cases that he said were “alleged to be testing the frontiers of tolerance.” Both his parallel careers as author and as barrister served Mortimer's belief in law as protector of individual liberties.

Called to the Bar in 1948, Mortimer was made a Queen's Counsel in 1966, and retired in 1984. On “taking silk” (as becoming a Queen’s Counsel in known, referring to the silk robes the QCs wear in court) he began defending criminal cases, including obscenity charges. In 1968, he successfully defended John Calder and Marion Boyars on appeal of their conviction under the Obscene Publications Act for publishing Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby. This case is considered a turning point in British censorship law.

In the early 1970s, the Obscene Publications Squad, with covert blessing from conservative elements in government, went after radical underground publications to divert attention from the real pornography they'd been bribed to ignore. Mortimer was one of the few barristers willing to defend in such cases. He defended Richard Handyside who published an English edition of the Danish Little Red Schoolbook guide for students to sex, drugs and rebellion. Handyside lost and eventually appealed to the European Court of Human Rights which helped to define how free speech would be handled across national boundaries.

Oz, an underground magazine, produced one issue (#28) written and illustrated by students, but the crude humor of “Schoolkids Oz” provoked prosecution under an archaic law, “conspiracy to corrupt the public morals,” that had no limit on the possible sentence. Mortimer defended the publishers in the 1971 “Oz conspiracy” trial, the longest obscenity trial in British legal history, and the harsh sentence was quashed on appeal. In his summing up for the jury, Mortimer said, "The case stands at the very cross roads of our liberties, at the boundaries of our freedom to think and draw and write about what we please."

In 1977, Mortimer defended Gay News editor Denis Lemon who was charged with Blasphemous libel in Whitehouse v. Lemon for publishing James Kirkup's poem "The Love that Dares to Speak its Name." The poem uses homoerotic imagery about Jesus to reconcile faith and same-sex love. The magazine was convicted and fined but Lemon's sentence was quashed on appeal.

The title of the 1977 Sex Pistols album Never Mind The Bollocks, uses a British vulgarity that brought Virgin Records and one of its' shops' window displays into court charged under the 1899 Indecent Advertising Act. Mortimer's defense included a professor of English who observed that “bollocks” appeared in englsh placenames without stirring any sensual desires in the residents. In his summing up, Mortimer asked, “do we live in a country where we are proud of our Anglo Saxon language? Do we wish our language to be verile and strong or watered down and weak?” The album title was acquitted of indecency.

Mortimer also used his character Horace Rumpole and the people he defends in London's Old Bailey, to illustrate his beliefs and promote his causes. He was against the death penalty as well as censorship, and a strong advocate for the right of all accused to a fair trial. Particularly in his second full length novel, Rumpole and the Reign of Terror published in 2006, Mortimer challenged the erosion of liberty in the name of national security. Despite criticism from his colleagues and his wife Hilda, Rumpole defends a Pakistani doctor accused of being an al Qaeda terrorist. The barrister condemns Britain's Anti-Terror Act as an assault on Magna Carta, aiding terrorism by undermining the rule of law. The fictional case also examines Britain's struggle with its new diversity.

After Labour's victory in 1997, Mortimer had been rewarded with a knighthood, but he became a persistent critic of the government's disregard of individual liberty. In both careers, he helped make criminal defense work respectable and police procedures more trustworthy. He always asserted that defense of individual liberties was the only justification for the profession of law, and its highest calling.

-Carolyn Caywood

Talking Privacy

Librarians met with diverse focus groups across the US to ask what concerns people have about privacy. We heard that privacy is a right necessary to human dignity and individual integrity, but it is personal and individual. Many folks commented on the gossip that pervades media and affects our concept of privacy.

People fear that partial and mis-information will result in them being misjudged. At the same time, people use new technology to learn more about others to protect themselves. New technology has heightened awareness of privacy implications. Privacy within a family and especially between a parent and child is judged differently.

Some say privacy is lost because we no longer know how to protect it. Others question “what are you trying to hide?” Many would trade privacy for convenience and convenience for security. Still others make a connection from privacy to financial security, health care, and employment prospects. The people who want government protection of privacy don’t trust the government’s intentions or ability to foil hackers. Though public safety and national security are invoked in opposition to privacy, people recognize that security is necessary to protect privacy.

The outcome of these focus group discussions is an ‘issue map’ that presents three alternatives for who or what could be in charge of protecting privacy: the marketplace, the government, or the individual (“my self”).

The full Privacy Issue Map is available here.

Privacy Issue Map

Who do I trust to protect my privacy?

the marketplace	the government	my self
Actions to Implement
Purchase security measures Use spending to reward business that respects privacy Use public opinion, boycott against intrusive businesses.	Set up an office like Canada Use courts to enforce checks/balances Enact legislation that protects privacy	Monitor credit, stay informed Demand transparent processes Pay cash, avoid EZpass
Supporters would say
Innovates to protect privacy Keeps up with new threats Is motivated to please customers ID theft threatens profits	HIPAA, Libraries are good examples Privacy implied in First Amendment Protecting rights is government role Clarifies public value for public servants	“Who will watch the watchers?” What should be private is individual Individual carelessness is main threat Only one who can detect/correct errors/theft
Opponents would say
Targeted marketing is invasive Data mining is profitable Susceptible to government pressure Public has limited leverage	No universal definition of what’s private Susceptible to demagoguery Cannot keep up with changing threats Always tempted by secrecy	Too hard, too much work Public is lazy, won’t demand privacy Individuals don’t have the power Can never be sure you’re safe
Tradeoffs
Savings through targeted sales Escalating security expenses	Public safety & National security Complex bureaucratic rules	Time & effort & inconvenience No one to blame but self