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Category Archives: Digital Rights

Crowdsourced maps will show exactly where surveillance cameras are watching

Fast Company – “Amnesty International is producing a map of all the places in New York City where surveillance cameras are scanning residents’ faces. The project will enlist volunteers to use their smartphones to identify, photograph, and locate government-owned surveillance cameras capable of shooting video that could be matched against people’s faces in a database… Continue Reading

YouTube’s Copyright Filter Is Crushing Video Critique And It’s Getting Worse

Gizmodo – “YouTube’s copyright filter is a labyrinthine nightmare called Content ID. Content ID works by scanning all the videos on YouTube and comparing them to a database of material submitted by copyright holders—often music labels and movie and TV studios—which have been given the ability to add things to the database by YouTube. Once… Continue Reading

As libraries fight for access to e-books, a new copyright champion emerges

Fortune – “A long running battle over copyright has flared up again, and Lila Bailey is at the center of it. A personable 43-year-old with degrees in philosophy and law, Bailey is the chief lawyer for the Internet Archive, a non-profit facing a major lawsuit from big publishers over how it lends out e-books. “This… Continue Reading

Amazon Publishing in Talks to Offer E-books to Public Libraries

Publishers Weekly – The potential deal would be a breakthrough moment in the library e-book market as Amazon currently does not make its digital content available to libraries. It would also be a major coup for the Digital Public Library of America’s upstart e-book platform and its SimplyE library reading app…Such an agreement would be… Continue Reading

How Controlled Digital Lending Makes an Entire College Library Available to Everyone Everywhere

Medium: “…When readers need access to a book that is essentially “locked up” in print, help is starting to be on the way through the concept of Controlled Digital Lending. This is an approach to library curation that allows print books to be digitally loaned in an environment that restricted people’s abilities to redistribute or… Continue Reading

Increased ebook lending popularity leaves publishers worried, librarians still dissatisfied

Via LLRX – Increased ebook lending popularity leaves publishers worried, librarians still dissatisfied –  Chris Meadows was a Editor and Senior Staff Writer at TeleRead, a site focusing on e-book and library news. It is with sadness that I share one of his last articles – he passed away last week after a hit and… Continue Reading

Academic publishing practices are making ebooks unaffordable, unsustainable and inaccessible to university libraries

Campaign to investigate the academic ebook market – “We are a group of academic librarians, researchers and university lecturers who have compiled an open letter asking the UK government to urgently investigate the academic publishing industry over its ebook pricing and licensing practices. The current situation is not working and it needs to change. Librarians… Continue Reading

NSA – Limiting Location Data Exposure

NSA Cybersecurity Information: “Mobile devices store and share device geolocation data by design. This data is essential to device communications and provides features—such as mapping applications—that users consider indispensable. Mobile devices determine location through any combination of Global Positioning System (GPS) and wireless signals (e.g., cellular, wireless (Wi-Fi®1), or Bluetooth®2 (BT)). Location data can be… Continue Reading

How Internet Archive and controlled digital lending can help course reserves this fall

Chris Freeland – Director of Open Libraries at Internet Archive: “I host regular webinars about the Internet Archive’s Open Libraries program, helping librarians and others understand how controlled digital lending works, and how their library can make their print collections available to users online. The question of how to safely handle course reserves is clearly… Continue Reading

Libraries lend books, and must continue to lend books

Internet Archive responds to publishers’ lawsuit: “Yesterday, the Internet Archive filed our response to the lawsuit brought by four commercial publishers to end the practice of Controlled Digital Lending (CDL), the digital equivalent of traditional library lending. CDL is a respectful and secure way to bring the breadth of our library collections to digital learners.… Continue Reading

Google censored search results after bogus copyright claims

Reclaim the Net – “We recently did a deep-dive for members about how the DMCA and copyright claims are one of the greatest growing threats to free speech online. Now, an investigation has revealed that Google has fallen victim to fake copyright notices and is taking down several legitimate news articles and similar search results.… Continue Reading

Smithsonian Releases 2.8 Million Images Into Public Domain

Smithsonian Magazine – “Culture connoisseurs, rejoice: The Smithsonian Institution is inviting the world to engage with its vast repository of resources like never before. For the first time in its 174-year history, the Smithsonian has released 2.8 million high-resolution two- and three-dimensional images from across its collections onto an open access online platform for patrons… Continue Reading