Sunshine week panel March 13, 2006
Sunshine Week The 2nd annual Sunshine Week is rapidly upon us. It's once again brought to you by Open the Government, partnering with OMB Watch and Democracy in Action. They've got an interesting panel of experts (Tom Blanton from the National Security Archive among others) lined up to talk about government secrecy -- especially salient at this time -- and what citizens can do to promote open government. They're looking for local hosts for the live satellite feed. Please contact them ASAP if your library would be willing to host. Continue reading
Forthcoming hearing on network neutrality to be webcast by committee
The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation will be holding a Full Committee Hearing on Network Neutrality on Tuesday, February 7, 2006. It will be webcast live:
More on Network Neutrality
The New York Times has a good article that covers network neutrality, the lousy home network service we get in the U.S., and more.
Left unmentioned in Verizon's pitch is the concentration of power that it enjoys in its service area, which would allow it to ignore the equal-access principle whenever it wishes. We are asked to take on faith that it and the other telephone companies with similar plans will handle ordinary network traffic with the same care they would show if they had not begun parallel businesses for the carriage trade. How likely is that?Continue reading
Presidential signing statements
There's an interesting article in today's NY Times entitled, "Presidential Signing Statements, and Alito's Role in Them, Are Questioned". It piqued my interest about presidential signing statements, so I tried to find others. Using the exact wording of the NYT article ("Presidential signing statements"), was unsuccessful. GPO Access' Public Papers of the Presidents gave some access, but only from 1991. What's worse, there is nothing for the current administration newer than 2002. I found nothing in LexisNexis, and only after a thorough search on whitehouse.gov did I find text there -- but not until I remembered the recent govdoc-l thread that described how to find them and Daniel Cornwall's helpful suggestion of using the phrase "statement on signing." Continue reading
Why we should care about network neutrality, now.
As we in depository libraries rely more and more on access to information that is not in our possession or control, we must rely on the Internet as the "pipe" that allows us and our users to get at that content that is on the servers of government agencies and others. And, when we do get digital files and we want to make them available over the Internet to users at home or in their offices, our users will be relying on the Internet as the pipe from them to us that allows them to get that content we want to deliver to them. So, what will happen if the Internet is no longer a neutral "pipe" that treats all bits equally? What happens if phone companies, cable companies, and other network service providers begin to give priority and higher bandwidth and speed to some services, some sites, and some information and, at the same time, reduce the bandwidth and speed of access to other sites, other content? Recent events and statements by the key players show that is exactly what they want to happen. For example, Ed Whitacre, the CEO of the large telephone company, SBC, caused a stir last November when he said that companies (such as Google and Yahoo) that make money using SBC's broadband connections should pay him. Continue reading