Slate on Wikipedia and Digg
Slate has an interesting article titled "Digg, Wikipedia and the Myth of Web 2.0 Democracy" in which the author, Chris Wilson, talks about how a few people are responsible for most of the entries in Digg and Wikipedia and various permutations of having an open-access site. He makes that point that "Despite the fairy tales about the participatory culture of Web 2.0, direct democracy isn't feasible at the scale on which these sites operate. Still, it's curious to note that these sites seem to have the hierarchical structure of the old-guard institutions they've sought to supplant."
Continue readingCall for Submissions: Information and Communications Technology Law
This notice is being posted on behalf of Debbie L Rabina of the Pratt Institute. Questions about the item below should go to her:
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Journal of Information and Communications Technology Law
Submissions for a Special Issue: Government-held Information, Privacy and Civic Access
Governments are most frequently the largest collectors of data
within their jurisdictions, and often that data collection and storage
is financially supported with public taxes. How governments manage and make available that information when requests are made by non-government parties varies in each country. As the data-sharing world finds new and multi-platform ways to network, the variations of legal access to government-held information create both opportunities and difficulties. This special issue will collect the state of access to government-held information with special attention to concerns for civilian privacy and civic activists’ oversight of government operations. Submissions should conform to normal journal specifications noted http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/cictauth.asp
Please send submission no later than August 1, 2008
Prof. D.L. Rabina Pratt Institute School of Information & Library Science, 144 West 14th Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10011-7301 or by email drabina@pratt.edu
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Hopefully some FGI reader out there will come up with a good article as a result of this opportunity.
Continue readingHearing on electronic preservation in the White House
The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is the main investigative committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. It has authority to investigate the subjects within the Committee’s legislative jurisdiction as well as “any matter” within the jurisdiction of the other standing House Committees.
Tues. Feb. 26 at 10 am the full Committee will hold a hearing entitled “Electronic Records Preservation at the White House.” According to the Committee website, the witnesses expected to testify include:
Senator Obama addresses Net Neutrality in Podcast from 2006
My Google Alert for podcasts works in strange ways. Today, for example, it sent me a podcast episode by Sen. Barack Obama done in 2006. Why it's flagging it now, I don't know.
But it's an interesting episode that addresses a major FGI interest, net neutrality. You can find the episode at http://obama.senate.gov/podcast/060608-network_neutral/. I think he sums up the issues well:
"It is because the Internet is a neutral platform that I can put out this podcast and transmit it over the Internet without having to go through any corporate media middleman. I can say what I want without censorship or without having to pay a special charge.
But the big telephone and cable companies want to change the Internet as we know it. They say that they want to create high speed lanes on the Internet and strike exclusive contractual agreements with Internet content providers for access to those high speed lanes.
Everyone who cannot pony up the cash will be relegated to the slow lanes."
If you're aware of other candidate statements on Net Neutrality, feel free to post links to them in comments. Interestingly, Sen. Obama's last podcast seems to have been on April 12, 2007. See all of his topics at http://obama.senate.gov/podcast/. If you're aware of him podcasting somewhere else, let us know by leaving a comment.
Continue readingCollaborative blogs – legal issues
You and some friends or colleagues decide to start a blog together. This is pretty common, but might there be some legal issues you haven't considered? Over at InformIT, Eric Goldman has written a 2 part series that examines this possiblity. Part I discusses the legal ramifications of blogging collaboratively, and in part 2 the author points out some possible solutions and recommendations for mitigating unwanted consequences of co-blogging.
Continue reading