Charles W. Bailey, Jr. of the University of Houston recently published an article that would be well worth the time of FGI readers to look over. The article is Strong Copyright + DRM + Weak Net Neutrality = Digital Dystopia?, and the final version appeared in Information Technology and Libraries, v. 25, no. 3, p. 116, September 2006. For ease of discussion and quoting, I have linked to Mr. Bailey's preprint version which he thoughtfully self-archived. Interesting, the final article seems to be around ten pages, while the preprint is 30. While copyright is not normally an issue relevant to government information, DRM (Digital Rights Management) and Net Neutrality are and I believe that Charles Bailey has offered an excellent introduction to both along with some practical examples why DRM and dropping Net Neutrality are bad for libraries and citizens. Some of the library headaches arising from DRM that Mr. Bailey cites are:

Godwin suggests that DRM may inhibit a variety of legitimate uses of DRM protected information, such as access to public domain works (or other works that would allow liberal use), preservation of works by libraries, creation of new derivative works, conduct of historical research, exercise of fair use rights, and instructional use. The ability of blind (or otherwise disabled) users to employ assistive technologies may also be prevented by DRM technology. DRM also raises a variety of privacy concerns.

I'd like suggest that we're already seeing problems with accessing public domain works in Google Book Search, which continues to treat most post-1923 Congressional hearings as though they were in copyright. After defining Net Neutrality, Mr. Bailey offers several examples of potential harm to users from losing net neutrality, including this one:

A third example is a comment by William L. Smith, BellSouth 's chief technology officer, who "told reporters and analysts that an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc.," but qualified this assertion by indicating that "a pay-for-performance marketplace should be allowed to develop on top of a baseline service level that all content providers would enjoy." About four months later, AT&T announced that it would acquire BellSouth, after which it "will be the local carrier in 22 states covering more than half of the American population."

Presumably the "baseline service level" would be too slow for many users or there would be little incentive to pay for faster service. With so many government services and publications only available through the Internet, what would "baseline service level" access mean for most users of e-government, especially the millions of rural users that only have dialup access. Doesn't seem like a pretty picture. The whole article is worth reading and can't be done full justice in a blog posting. Please try to read it over and come back here with any comments. Continue reading →

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Thanks to Denise Johnson of the Bradley University Library in Peoria, IL, the 50 State Blue Book guide has a new home. Please change any page links or bookmarks to the guide to: http://wwwapp.bradley.edu/library_reference/index.php/State_Blue_Books This page is a wiki open to all users for editing. So I invite people from every state to cruise over to the guide and review your state's entry. If something isn't right, just click on the edit tab at the top of the page and fix it. If we all work together, this can be a very useful and extremely up-to-date resource. If you spot an error and are uncomfortable using wikis, please send your correction to dan_cornwall@eed.state.ak.us and I will update the page for you. Now that I can edit the guide outside my home, corrections should be quicker. But do try to edit the page yourself. It'll give you practice in library 2.0 technologies and maybe give you ideas on how to present government information. Be sure to change those bookmarks because this weekend, I will be editing my personal web site to point to the Bradley University copy. Thanks again to Bradley University for helping make this a group project! Together we are strong and have all the answers! Or at least some. - Daniel Continue reading →

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I'm surprised I missed a study issued in July 2006 by the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government titled Frequent Filers: Businesses Make FOIA Their Business. This study of thousands of FOIA requests made some surprising findings:

The report by the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government analyzed 6,439 FOIA requests to 11 Cabinet-level departments and six large agencies in September 2005, the closing month of the last federal budget year. The review found that more than 60 percent of the requests came from commercial interests, including professional data brokers working on behalf of clients who wanted such information as the asbestos level on old Navy ships, cockpit recordings from crashed airliners and background data on prospective employees. The second-largest group of requesters —categorized as "other" and consisting mostly of private citizens—comprised a third of the total. These were individuals from a wide swath of society: a movie producer doing research for The Road to Guantanamo, a divorcee searching for hidden assets and UFO enthusiasts seeking evidence of other worldly visitations. There were also requests from a local police department mining for information on federal grants, a whistleblower trying to shore up a claim of government wrongdoing, historians digging into original source material, a cryptologist trying to recover a Navy intelligence report he had worked on years earlier, and a lawyer in the Texas Attorney General’s office trying to locate parents overdue on child support payments. "Media" requests accounted for 6 percent of the total. Many reporters say it takes too long to get information through FOIA to make it a meaningful tool for newsgathering. It is used more frequently by journalists working on longer, investigative projects.

So, at least according to this study the picture of the Freedom of Information Act as a tool for journalists to embarassment the government while wasting its time is another urban legend. Granted, the study was done by reporters, but their methodology looked sound. Pull up the study and judge for yourself. Freedom of information is just as good for Wall Street as for Main Street, or even better. When you're done checking out the study, try looking up their background papers. Lots of good stuff. Continue reading →

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It's late and I'm just browsing through the NY Times headlines in my RSS reader (I use thunderbird btw), and came across this doozy of a headline that is the epitome of counting your chickens before they're even eggs, much less hatched!

Tucked away in fine print in the military spending bill for this past year was a lump sum of $20 million to pay for a celebration in the nation’s capital “for commemoration of success” in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not surprisingly, the money was not spent.

Good night and good luck. Continue reading →

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First, thanks to James Jacobs and the rest of the crew at FGI for the privilege of being guest blogger for October. And what a time to be blogging about government information! I can't say it better than Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points Memo, who asked yesterday

Is it me, or is all hell breaking loose in this country's politics? We're in the last month of an election cycle and there are maybe four or five stories, each of which could totally dominate the national political news on their own. And each is flaming out of control at once ...

So, I was going to talk about the New Mexico State Library's OCLC Digital Archive project (and still will), but the timing on this was too perfect. My bio mentions that we receive and process state agency pubs for distribution to our state depositories. Fresh out of one of the boxes yesterday was Internet safety guide for parents / Internet safety guide for teens from the New Mexico Office of the Attorney General. You can view the titles separately in PDF or HTML format on the New Mexico AG's website. The print version is a single, 6.5-in.-square booklet with the two titles printed back-to-back and upside down to each other (known to catalogers and hardly anyone else as a tete-beche, in case you need some cocktail-party trivia). While I'm aware of some NGO sites dealing with Internet safety, I haven't taken the time to search for other state or federal government pubs on the topic. Anyone know of others? Now, one reaction I have to something like this is to be a little nervous that government, at any level, takes this much interest in the Internet and what people are doing with it. Librarians have been tirelessly speaking out about the possible negative effects of CIPA, DOPA, etc. On the other hand, kids surfing the Internet can run into problems, and I'd much rather see government pubs and websites giving people tips about how to educate and monitor their kids on their own rather than passing lots of laws and imposing regulations. This being election season, I can't resist pointing out a political tie-in to one of the most closely watched House races in the country. Patricia Madrid, New Mexico's state AG, whose name appears on this booklet, is running as a Democrat against the four-term, Republican incumbent, Heather Wilson, in New Mexico's 1st House district. Madrid has made child Internet safety a centerpiece of her campaign from the beginning, months before the Foley scandal broke. And somewhat awkwardly for Wilson, this morning's Santa Fe New Mexican reports that she served on the board overseeing the House pages from April 2001 to January of 2005. The latest Albuquerque Journal poll showed them tied at 44 percent each. Sounds like an interesting race to watch. Continue reading →

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