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Open source thought experiment
There was a great post to NGC4Lib list (ngc4lib = "Next Generation Catalogs for libraries") yesterday by Joe Lucia, the University Librarian
at Villanova, entitled a "thought experiment." In it, Lucia describes how to create next generation library systems via an open source collaborative commons. WOW!, a university librarian suggesting that a bunch of libraries get together to build an open source development system?! Thanks Joe Lucia for starting this conversation. I really hope it becomes more than simply a "thought experiment." Here's one of the juicier bits:
If we look beyond money to personnel, the option looks even better. Let me suggest some numbers. What if, in the U.S., 50 ARL libraries, 20 large public libraries, 20 medium-sized academic libraries, and 20 Oberlin group libraries anted up one full-time technology position for collaborative open source development. That's 110 developers working on library applications with robust, quickly-implemented current Web technology -- not legacy stuff. There is not a company in the industry that I know of which has put that much technical effort into product development. With such a cohort of developers working in libraries on library technology needs -- and in light of the creativity and thoughtfulness evident on forums like this one -- I think we would quickly see radical change in the library technology arena. Instead of being technology followers, I venture to say that libraries might once again become leaders. Let's add to the pool some talent from beyond the U.S. -- say 20 libraries in Canada, 10 in Australia, and 10 in the U.K. put staff into the pool. We've now got 150 developers in this little start-up. Then we begin pouring our current software support funds into regional collaboratives. Within a year or two, we could be re-directing 10s of millions of dollars into regional technology development partnerships sponsored by and housed within the regional consortia, supporting and extending the work of libraries. The potential for innovation and rapid deployment of new tools boggles the mind. The resources at our disposal in this scenario dwarf what any software vendor in our small application space is ever going to support. And, as is implicit in all I've said, the NGC is just the tip of the iceberg.
[Thanks OSS4lib list!]
Continue readingWhy open formats are important for government information
Have you ever tried to open a WordPerfect document when all you have is Microsoft Word? Or maybe you've received a Microsoft Works document and found that your version of Word won't open it. If you've been around documents for a while, perhaps you've tried to open some of the spreadsheets that agencies distributed in Lotus format and found that you couldn't open the files If so, you've experienced first-hand the problem that Aliya Sternstein describes in an article about the importance of open formats for government information:
- The Risks Of Software Choice In E-Government, by Aliya Sternstein, National Journal's Technology Daily, (Sept. 20, 2007 pm edition)
One of the big technological battles going on now is between the truly open ODF format and Microsoft's so-called open format, OOXML. Sternstein writes "Microsoft and its supporters maintain that having a choice between any and all open file formats would be advantageous for governments" but that "[g]iving U.S. agencies a choice in file formats could be bad for record-keeping because down the road, records might be saved in different, non-compatible formats or agencies might be held hostage by one company's product line."
Will Rodger, public policy director with the Computer and Communications Industry Association, says:
"It is hugely ironic that promoters of OOXML and critics of ODF say you need to look at what their technologies do. As far as we can tell, the greatest impetus for the development of OOXML is to create technologies that perpetuate the proprietary lock-in [that] governments were trying to eliminate in the first place."
(See also: Government Information in Legacy Formats: Scaling a Pilot Project to Enable Long-Term Access, by Gretchen Gano and Julie Linden, D-Lib Magazine (July/August 2007) Volume 13 Number 7/8, and a project a colleague of mine, Doug Tower, worked on several years ago, the UCSD GPO Data Migration Project and the page that describes some of the processing for that project, Processing and Quality Control. Also see: Microsoft vs. Open Formats.)
Continue readingUNESCO whitepaper on Open Source Digital Archival and Preservation System
- Towards an Open Source Repository and Preservation System: Recommendations on the Implementation of an Open Source Digital Archival and Preservation System and on Related Software Development, Kevin Bradley, Junran Lei, and Chris Blackall. Paris: UNESCO, 2007.
This is an interesting and worthwhile whitepaper. It examines existing open source tools and evaluates them for constructing a digital archival and preservation system compatible with the Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS). Their aim it to develop a single package open source repository system based on existing open source platforms. Its model organization is a small- to medium-size cultural heritage organization with a low, but not non-existent, capital investment budget aiming to manage between 1TB and 20TB of data.
One of the recommendations of the whitepaper is to "Encourage the development of federated and cooperative approaches through the adoption of standard data packages."
Although the report does not examine LOCKSS because its goal was to be able to support standalone preservation repositories that are not dependant on remote storage facilities or systems, it does have as another key finding that the system should "Make multiple copies, and check and verify them regularly" -- just as LOCKSS does
This from the executive summary:
This Document defines the requirements for a digital archival and preservation system using standard hardware and describes a set of open source software which can be used to implement it. This report defines the requirements for a digital archival and preservation system using standard hardware and describes a set of open source software which could used to implement it. There are two aspects of this report that distinguish it from other approaches. One is the complete or holistic approach to digital preservation. The report recognises that a functioning preservation system must consider all aspects of a digital repositories; Ingest, Access, Administration, Data Management, Preservation Planning and Archival Storage, including storage media and management software. Secondly, the report argues that, for simple digital objects, the solution to digital preservation is relatively well understood, and that what is needed are affordable tools, technology and training in using those systems.Continue reading
Version control of Congress?
What a great idea! Karl Fogel, an open-source software developer, writer and activist for copyright reform had this to say in a recent New York Times article:
Karl Fogel, president of the Subversion Corporation, which produces open-source version control software, He sees its power to shape public behavior. Think of what version control software could mean for the Congress, he was quoted as saying recently at Tim O’Reilly’s blog . If bills were created under a system where strike-throughs and additions were carefully tracked, the public would know which legislator made which change to a proposed piece of legislation as it made its way through the Capitol. At last, there would be transparency in the legislative process. Best-case scenario, it would shame legislators from inserting language against the public interest and only meant to reward political contributors; at worst, it would make such insertions public and allow the voters to punish the politicians who made them."Crossing Out, for Emphasis" by Noam Cohen. NYT 7/23/07. Continue reading
What really happened with Google Premium Video — Part one: DRM killed the files
August 18, 2007 / 1 Comment on What really happened with Google Premium Video — Part one: DRM killed the files
As Daniel pointed out on Tuesday (Another Example of Access Bad, Ownership Good), when Google shut down its premium video service on August 15, it was able to prevent customers who had bought and paid for videos from Google from ever watching those videos again. But there is a bit more to the story -- and it has implications for how government information is distributed.
In this, Part One of a two part look at the issues, we examine how Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies and proprietary software allowed Google to make it impossible for users to watch videos that they had bought from Google even though they had downloaded the video files onto their own computers. In Part Two we examine why this story is important for government information specialists and Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) librarians.
While it wasn't obvious from the initial news stories about this, Google used DRM and proprietary software to deny access to files users had paid for and downloaded. Although the Government Printing Office (GPO) has not used identical techniques, it has experimented with similar ones and has never explicitly rejected use of techniques that could provide government a way to deny access to information even if users have copies of files on their own computers. More on that below.
Google's premium video-purchase-and-download service overlapped with with Google's YouTube-like service, Google Video, which offers streaming video without charge and some free downloads. But in early 2006, Google announced a service as part of Google Video that would allow users to pay to rent or buy certain videos (such as NBA basketball games and TV shows such as CSI) and it is that service that changed this week and those videos that people purchased that they no longer can watch.
YouTube and Google Video use "streaming" video technology so that you watch the stream of video as it comes to you. It is also possible to download videos in some cases. But the Google premium video service allowed users to pay for videos, download them, keep the video files, and watch them without streaming or re-streaming the content. Customers had the files on their own computers and could copy them and put them on different machines as if they really did "own" them. But there was a catch.
Actually, there were three catches. First, users of this service had to download and install the proprietary "Google Player" software. (The software was originally downloadable from http://video.google.com/playerdownload but even the Google cache of that page disappeared this week.) It served a similar function to Windows Media Player or Quicktime or other media players, but it used its own proprietary format (".gvi"). Only the Google Player could play Google Videos.
Second, you could watch the proprietary format using the proprietary player only if you were connected to the internet and authenticated yourself as the purchaser.
Since the Google Player was the only player that could read the files one purchased, users were locked-in to the DRM of authentication-over-the-internet (sometimes called the "phone home" feature). So, even if you paid for a video and "owned" the file you downloaded, you couldn't watch it unless Google allowed you to do so -- every time you watched it. This week Google simply turned off the ability for users to authenticate. Presumably, this is the way the Google rental service operated from the start: after 24 hours, you no longer had permission to view the file you downloaded. It turned out that the "purchase" program was just a temporary service as well.
This is why The Guardian described the situation this way:
And that brings us to the third catch: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Although there are hacks, work-arounds, and other technical tricks that allow one to circumvent the Google phone-home DRM, they are against the law. Again, The Guardian saw the implication of this for libraries:
There is more about this story and its implications for FDLP libraries in Part Two.
More information:
- Google Video robs customers of the videos they "own", BoingBoing August 10, 2007
- Google Video service to go black by Dawn C. Chmielewski and Alex Pham Los Angeles Times, August 11, 2007
- Google's permanent video sales less-than-permanent by Cade Metz, The Register, August 11, 2007
- Google Video DRM: Why is Hollywood more important than users? by Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing, February 14, 2006
- More On Google Copy Protection by Mike Masnick, TechDirt, Mon, Jan 9th 2006
- Google's Copy Protection: Supplying The Tools For Others To Be Evil by Mike Masnick, TechDirt, Fri, Jan 6th 2006
- Google Video (beta) by Troy Dreier, CNet, 2/7/06
- Google Video Player Terms and Conditions Google Video
- Good Uses for DRM Jimmy Palmer, DRM Blog (September 2. 2005) [good description of "phone home" DRM]
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