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More courts to offer audio recordings — for a fee through PACER
More Federal Courts Move to Offer Digital Audio Recordings Online, The Third Branch, United States Courts, (November 2010). According to Stephen Schultze, It is "worth noting that during the pilot period of this service, the fee for the audio files was $.08. This highlights the arbitrary nature of pricing for internet-delivered electronic court documents. Does the current pricing meet the statutory requirement (28 USC 1913 note) that the "Judicial Conference may, only to the extent necessary, prescribe reasonable fees... to reimburse expenses incurred in providing these services"? Continue reading
North Carolina shares digital preservation tips
The North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources' State Library and State Archives (Cultural Resources) have a new website designed to guide local and state government employees who are responsible for the preservation of North Carolina state public records. http://digitalpreservation.ncdcr.gov The site has resources that can help North Carolina government employees -- and those responsible for digital information in general -- learn how to ensure that today's digital information is saved so that it can become tomorrow's heritage. The site includes tutorials that explain what digital preservation is and why it is important; a checklist of key digital preservation practices; "quick tips," advanced tutorials, and more. While the site is directed toward North Carolina public servants, it is general enough to be useful to those considering, implementing, or teaching on the topic. Thanks and hat tip to Lisa A. Gregory, Digital Projects Liaison, Digital Information Management Program, State Library of North Carolina, NC Department of Cultural Resources, and the Bestpractices mailing list (Bestpractices@islemail.org). Continue reading
New book by Tim Wu called “The Best Book of 2010”
'The Master Switch' is the Best Book of 2010, By Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed (November 14, 2010).
...In The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, Tim Wu does not examine the place of higher ed in the information economy. But I think that it is essential that our community pay attention to the lessons that he draws. In The Master Switch, Wu traces the history of the major information technology revolutions, and demonstrates how they all started with the promise of democratization and transformation and ended up with a realities of monopoly, limited choice, and restricted opportunities for expression. ....The Master Switch is a warning that if we allow ownership to consolidate in the Internet space in the name of 'quality of service' or 'the logic of the market' that we are in danger of repeating the path tread by other information technologies. Government must play a role in insuring we have a diversity of carriers, a policy of neutrality towards content, and a separation between content creators and content carriers. Our ability to disrupt the educational status quo, in terms of both improved quality and access, will depend on us not allowing the Internet industry to follow the same path towards consolidation and control that befell the information industries that have gone before.Continue reading
Justice Department Censors Nazi-Hunting History
Justice Department Censors Nazi-Hunting History, ("National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 331"), National Security Archive, George Washington University, November 13, 2010.
The Department of Justice censored dozens of pages of a candid history of Nazi-hunting (and Nazi-protecting) by the U.S. government to such a self-defeating extent that former officials leaked the entire document to the New York Times this week, instead of fulfilling the Freedom of Information request and lawsuit filed by the National Security Archive and its counsel David Sobel. "Now that we can compare the redacted document with the complete text of the original report, it is clear that the Justice Department is withholding information without legal justification," said David Sobel. ...The Archive posted today its original FOIA request, the government's response, our appeal by counsel David Sobel, the legal complaint in the case National Security Archive v. Department of Justice, the interim response from DoJ, the "Vaughn index" of withheld pages and alleged justifications for the withholding, and the 45 pages of partial and highly-redacted response.Continue reading
Malamud on Public Information
There is a good interview with Carl Malamud in Library Journal. Carl sees the intersection of legally public domain government information with orphan works, all legal information, and information we are losing because of lack of curation and control by the private sector.
- Public Information for All: An Interview with Carl Malamud, By Debbie Rabina, Library Journal (Nov 1, 2010). Do you see a role for libraries? The availability of materials and the parceling out in the public domain is a huge issue for libraries, not only for government documents generally and legal material specifically but everything from the letters of Ben Franklin to all this wonderful corpus of materials that has been issued but is no longer available, the problem of orphan and fallow works, for example, the problem of official vendors of materials that don’t allow knowledge to be spread. Librarians should and must be jumping up and down and pounding the table and saying, “This is a huge issue.”
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