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Daily Archives: December 2, 2019

Release of World’s First Internet & Jurisdiction Global Status Report

“The Secretariat of the Internet & Jurisdiction Policy Network launched the world’s first Internet & Jurisdiction Global Status Report at the United Nations Internet Governance Forum on November 27, 2019, during a Special Session. It presents a first-of-its-kind mapping of internet jurisdiction related policy trends, actors and initiatives. The pioneering Internet & Jurisdiction Global Status Report 2019 is a new resource for policy makers and shapers to enable evidence-based policy innovation. It exposes a dangerous spiral of uncoordinated policy making. At a time when the world has never been so interconnected, reactive and quick-fix, unilateral regulatory initiatives proliferate to tackle new digital challenges. This legal arms race is threatening the future of the cross-border internet, unless actors actively coordinate.”

KEY FINDINGS

  • 79% of surveyed stakeholders consider that there is insufficient international coordination and coherence to address cross-border legal challenges on the internet.
  • 95% of them agree that cross-border legal challenges on the internet will become increasingly acute in the next three years.
  • Only 15% of them believe that we already have the right institutions to address these challenges. 

Archivists Are Trying to Make Sure a ‘Pirate Bay of Science’ Never Goes Down

Vice – A new project aims to make LibGen, which hosts 33 terabytes of scientific papers and books, much more stable. “It’s hard to find free and open access to scientific material online. The latest studies and current research huddle behind paywalls unread by those who could benefit. But over the last few years, two… Continue Reading

Facebook Gives Workers a Chatbot to Appease That Prying Uncle

The New York Times – “Some Facebook employees recently told their managers that they were concerned about answering difficult questions about their workplace from friends and family over the holidays. What if Mom or Dad accused the social network of destroying democracy? Or what if they said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, was collecting their… Continue Reading

Books May Be Dead in 2039, but Stories Live On

The New York Times – Opinion: On the 600th anniversary of the Gutenberg press, we can still celebrate how stories are shared. By Alix E. Harrow, author of  The Ten Thousand Doors of January. “In 1439, an eccentric German goldsmith cast the Latin alphabet in lead, smeared the letters with oil-based ink and squashed them… Continue Reading

Visualizing How Adversity Affects SAT Scores

WSJ.com [paywall]: “What if SAT scores could take into account whether a student went to an elite boarding school in New England or a struggling public school in Chicago’s poorest neighborhood? The College Board, which administers the SAT, asked this question and developed an adversity score for every U.S. high school, measuring about 15 factors… Continue Reading

Books on wheels – When the library comes to the homeless shelter

Christian Science Monitor – “The bookmobile has a history of bringing the written word to people who can’t get to a library building. Queens has taken that ethos further, parking its mobile library at homeless shelters in the borough…Over the past decade, scholars and social workers have noted how public libraries around the country are… Continue Reading

Why Second-Hand Ebook Market May Never Take Off

Fortune: “If you buy a physical book, you can sell it to someone else afterwards—that’s the basis of the longstanding second-hand book market, and it’s something people have taken for granted for generations. So can you do the same with electronic books? Not according to Europe’s highest court, which issued a ruling Thursday that could… Continue Reading