copy this blog

One of the best Grokster discussions is on SCOTUS.

It’s making the blog rounds now, that Grokster has been overturned 9-0. People are still and will be arguing whether or not the decision is a bad thing. Here’s a Copyfight link on the Grokster decision. Time to read the decision in its entirety in my copious spare time and update the 312 copyright module.
Edit: I said overturned- returned to the lower court is more accurate.

I’ve been slow in updating the blog recently- we’re buying a house! So I’ve been excited and busy. Also, things at work are getting very hectic. Quinn has been in overdrive as a result of the IMLS grant, but as a result we’ve got some great things coming up in the areas of digital preservation and conservation, more on that next month when we start setting up the digitization lab.

The UT Telecampus IOL presentation went well, I think. Three of us (Sam, Quinn, and I) were there live, and Kayla and Patrick came in over iChat (next time, perhaps, Skype). I only got to briefly address the privacy, records, and copyright issues that come with moving a course to the digital realm, because I had to spend some time addressing our encounters with student copying and plagiarism. I had a couple of questions on the subject after the presentation. Thursday I’m giving another very small local presentation on the subject- I hope to add something about how I looked at the developing electronic rules of evidence (one of the reasons I remembered to add the blog in the last entry) and the concepts of authenticity, reliability, and accuracy.

Added a new site to the blog list- Sound Evidence, a site about electronic discovery and similar issues. Definitely an important subject when considering the law and electronic resources, records, computer security, and so on.

The end of semester, a busy time.
A brief description of how we work on finding copying/plagiarism in INF 312
We’ll be presenting at a UT System conference in early June; stay tuned.

“… because the rules promulgated by the Flag Order regulate demodulator products after the transmission of a DTV broadcast is complete, these regulations exceed the scope of authority Congress delegated to the FCC. And because the Commission can only issue regulations on subjects over which it has been delegated authority by Congress, the rules adopted by the Flag Order are invalid at the threshold jurisdictional inquiry.”

American Library Association v. FCC, No. 04-1037b, D.C. Court of Appeals, May 6, 2005
http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200505/04-1037b.pdf

I’m using Google Alerts to get articles about copyright and other subjects, and the things I see disturb me.
The boy scouts of Hong Kong are getting an IP badge. I wonder what they’re taught about IP? The industries pushed the concept. I’d like to see what they’re learning.
It disturbs me that there’s so much FUD associated with copyright. Search for “Sharing isn’t Caring,” a phrase I got from Google Alerts, on a search engine. You’ll get an eyeful, and an eyeful that is in many respects, wrong. We’ve got Christianity Today lamenting the fact that only 20 percent of their readers (from a poll) believe that all ripping/burning is illegal while 34% believe that personal copying is okay. That’s sad. Audio Home Recording Act, anyone? The Rio case? etc. etc.?

I’m doing an informal survey about the skills the people should have before info school and skills they should have by the time they leave info school. If you’re interested and have the time, the url is
http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~support/survey/

There are many viewpoints in the information profession… the changing role of libraries and who information professions are is one of them, as is the role of our educational institutions. I’ve just squashed a ton of discussion and debate into that sentence, because I’m kind of tired right now. ^_^; At any rate, I recently sent this letter out to the tlc list in response to something my mother passed along…
—-

I work at the school, and my views don’t necessarily reflect anyone else here.

I am not a librarian. I would be proud to call myself a librarian. It’s just a fact. I, like many, have an MLIS degree. I graduated from the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Texas at Austin. I am a member of TLA. I am a member of ALA. I am concerned with intellectual freedom, access to information, libraries and information services.

I am a “Computer Resource Development Specialist” at the School of Information, formerly GSLIS. Am I anti-libraries? No. I love libraries. Am I anti-book? No. I love books. Am I anti-librarian? No. My mother was a librarian for many years. My wife has worked in libraries since college. As a matter of fact, in the tech department here at the iSchool, all of our mothers were librarians, and all of us have an MLIS. ^_^

I am not a librarian. I love librarians, and what they do, but it feels wrong for me to call myself a librarian. It’s not because I don’t deal with books- I do actually deal with books. It’s not because I do technology support and deal with vendors, licensing, budgets, and so on- lots of librarians do the same thing- or because I teach a web-based undergraduate course. Librarians teach all the time.

It’s because I don’t work in a library. I don’t have a library titled position in a library setting. I would be proud to call myself a librarian if people considered what I do librarianship. I’d be happy to call myself a librarian even if ALA thought what I did was librarianship. But most people focus on the setting. I was happy when someone recently referred to me as an MLIS-related professional. ^_^

I do interact with people. My purpose is also to connect people with information. Sometimes the best way to do that is with a book. In the questions I get asked, it’s often not, but that’s to be expected in my own role. ^_^ But a whole lot of our graduates do the same thing, and not in the library setting. We’ve got archivists here. We’ve got records managers. We’ve got a great preservation and conservation program. We’ve got people who work with human computer interaction, and people who work with information architecture, and people who program, and people who work with education and distance learning and organizing and accessing information, and people who love books, etc. etc. But you’d better believe we have librarians. We have school librarians, academic librarians, special libraries librarians, etc.

Many of the positions people end up in, or even their areas of interest, though, don’t directly involve libraries. And I’m not saying that to slight libraries. But all of these positions have commonalities. We are all concerned about people interacting with information. People are still the focus of all of our positions.

I was a student at the school just before the degree name change. The MLIS became the MSIS. GSLIS became the iSchool. I was okay with that. I would have been happy with either degree, actually. I was really okay with dropping the “information science” part of the name. I think School of Information is more inclusive- because all of those roles can fit. Does it deepmhasize the role of libraries? That wasn’t the intention. Libraries are very much a part of our program. But they couldn’t call it the School of Archives, Records Management, Libraries, Instructional Technology, and you get the picture. They went with the broader theme, and chose not to focus on one setting. One setting is more limiting than it should be. I don’t think they expected to the change to have been quite as divisive as people make it out to be- it was supposed to be inclusive and focus on the common areas and values we all share.

Now, this UGL thing- it disturbs me. But the article is premature in describing what will happen to that space, because right now nobody really knows. It’s been talked about for a long time, and I don’t even know if it’s really in actual planning stages yet. The removal of the books disturbs me, but I suspect that it was more of a budgetary thing than anything else. (I don’t know.) The University Libraries have gotten the short end of the stick regarding money in the past, which I find awful. I am fairly confident that the space isn’t going to simply be turned over to ITS with no regards or thought about student needs, though.

I find that the biggest problem is, for a lot of people entering the field, is that librarians don’t earn what they should. I don’t know how that can change, but it’s one of many reasons that I joined the professional organizations.

Just another information professional,
Carlos Ovalle

From BNA News, The RIAA DMCA Subpoenas at UNC & NC State have been shot down, apparently because the court issuing the subpoenas lacked jurisdiction and because the copyrighted materials were found on computers outside of the University’s reach (in reference to an earlier case).

It would be wrong not to include a link to Decontructing Stupidity, articles by law professor and founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain, James Boyle. The article addresses several problems with current policy dealing with intellectual property. As you might by able to infer from the title, the author does not look favorably on current practices (namely, not actually basing assumptions on evidence). ^_^