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Not Just Blogs: Government Information in the Digital Era: Free Culture or Controlled Substance?
FGI is more than the blog. We also have articles of greater length and substance here on the FGI site. Sometimes those show up as blog entries and some are highlighted on the Library page. Today we feature an article from last year: Government Information in the Digital Era: Free Culture or Controlled Substance?. This is a detailed summary of a paper by Karrie Peterson and James A. Jacobs that we presented at the symposium, Free Culture and the Digital Library, at Emory University in Atlanta Georgia in October of 2005. Whether you missed it when originally posted or just want a quick overview of some key issues, we recommend it. As always, we welcome your comments. Address them to admin at freegovinfo.info Continue reading
Judge orders Cheney’s records released
A federal judge has ordered the Bush administration to release information about who visited Vice President Dick Cheney's office and personal residence...
Three new items on Digital Rights Management and Government Information
Two new documents and one news story outline the potential problems of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies, particularly to public information.
- Trusted Computing and Digital Rights Management Principles & Policies, New Zealand State Services Commission (September 2006, Version 1.0).
- Government should use DRM sparingly by Robert Gellman, Government Computer News (10/09/06).
- Evaluating DRM: Building a Marketplace for the Convergent World, The Center for Democracy and Technology (September 2006 – Version 1.0).
The New Zealand Government Principles and Policies document defines DRM this way.
"Digital rights management (DRM) is a set of technologies designed to apply and enforce persistent access restrictions to digital information, as specified by the information provider. Digital rights management can regulate the types of actions that can be done with information (for example, view, print, copy or modify) and the time frame in which that information remains accessible."
The New Zealand principles and policies were developed "in anticipation of the growing usage of trusted computing and digital rights management technologies. The aim of the principles and policies is to ensure that the use of trusted computing and digital rights management technologies does not adversely affect the integrity (including availability and confidentiality) of government-held information or related government systems."
Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies when applied to any content can limit access, prevent or limit use, endanger privacy, and make preservation and long term access difficult or impossible. When applied to government information, it can endanger citizen access to and use of public information and thus should be avoided. As governments increasingly use digital technologies as the only method of distribution of public information, there is a growing potential for use of DRM for a variety of reasons deemed legitimate by information distributors. When DRM technologies are used, even if the intended use is benign, the technology can impose unintended restrictions.
The Center for Democracy and Technology addresses DRM technology issues in general. Robert Gellman puts these two documents in context and comments on them.
Continue readingNot Just Blogs: Depository Library Council Vision
In our continuing our series of reminders that FGI is more than the FGI blog, we call your attention to the information and commentary we brought together about the Depository Library Council Vision. There you will find links to Daniel's comments on the four sections of the draft vision, a reprint of a comment by jajacobs on the "non-exclusive environment" and comments and suggestions from Jim Jacobs, James Jacobs and Shinjoung Yeo that were originally posted on the FGI blog. We will be providing new comments on the paper, Knowledge Will Forever Govern, the final version of the Depository Library Council vision paper. Watch for it here. Continue reading
Interview with Ted Nelson
New Scientist has an interesting series of articles about social networking, including articles by Bruce Sterling (I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by Google) and Sherry Turkle (I'll have to ask my friends).
My own favorite, though, is:
- The internet could be so much better (interview with Ted Nelson) New Scientist, September 16, 2006, page 54-55 issue 2569.
Nelson's influence on the way we communicate goes back more that forty years to when he coined the term hypertext and envisioned his Xanadu project. I believe some of his comments on social networking sites can give us insights into how we think about digital government information.
For example, he says that how hypertext is used determines which linkages among sites and people and documents are easy, which are hard, and which are impossible. Anyone who has tried to link directly to documents buried in GPO Access knows that linking to government information can be very, very difficult. (If you haven't looked lately, check out the page Help: Linking to Documents on GPO Access which begins with the disclaimer "Documents that exist within databases on GPO Access cannot be bookmarked." Try creating "a unique URL string" and see if it works. If you've created links in the past, check to see if they still work. I did and about half worked and half didn't. Ask yourself how many people will actually use this kind of linking? Will we someday see a better system when FDSys is online? At this point, we can only hope.)
Nelson also says that many social networking sites are "all about real estate. You set out your stall, stake out a territory....The whole World Wide Web is about a sense of ownership." Nelson envisions something very different: "sharing media and acknowledging sources, without walls or boundaries." Compare that to the GPO Vision of documents for sale. Look in vain for a vision of open-linking, DRM-free access, guarantees of free and fully functional information in the GPO vision and ask yourself whether it is more about "ownership" and control of information or sharing information without boundaries.
Finally, Nelson, touches on but does not explore an issue critical to democracy when he is asked about dynamic documents that are never out of date. The interviewer asks, "Does that mean documents are never finished?" and Nelson replies, "Finishing is a political act." In the government information community we know this lesson well. Everyday we see how "finishing" a document and publishing it is often more of a political statement of how the government interprets information than it is a statement of objective fact. It is also, however, a tangible record that citizens can use to hold elected representatives and civil servants accountable. But how does "finishing" relate to information that is "never out of date" in the government information world? Will we, in the future, have a record of what we knew and when we knew it, of what the government said and when it said it? Or will we only have an ever-changing "never out of date" view of what the government says at the moment we ask for information? And, will GPO and OMB and government information policy facilitate government control of information or will information be free to use and re-use and redistribute?
FDLP Libraries can play an essential role in ensuring free, open access to government information, but government information specialists will have to insist on a vision very different from GPO's if we are to make that vision happen.
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