Age of missing information
The Age of Missing Information: The Bush administration's campaign against openness. Slate, March 17, 2005. By Steven Aftergood. Steven Aftergood knows about government information. After all, he's the director of the American Federation of Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy. Aftergood's article deals with the rapid and agressive control of unclassified government information since 2001. It gives several good examples of our government being overzealous with our information. Listen to Aftergood's interview on NPR's Day to Day. Continue reading
FGI signs on to EFF DRM report
Cory Doctorow from the Electronic Frontier Foundation has just written a document called "Digital Rights Management: A failure in the developed world, a danger to the developing world," written for an International Telecommunications Union (ITU) report on DRM that is aimed at telecoms regulators in national governments around the world who are trying to figure out which DRM to adopt. A number of distinguished Non-Governmental Organizations (including yours truly!) have signed onto the paper. If you're interested in singing on, please email Cory.
The "DRM hypothesis" is that the public is dishonest, and will do dishonest things with cultural material if given the chance. DRM is deployed in order to force dishonest customers to behave honestly and buy media and to limit their activities to those that are authorized by rightsholders. For this to work, it must be impossible for a potential customer for media to locate a non-DRM copy of their chosen movies, books, games or music. If a dishonest customer for an ebook can download an un-restricted version of a book that is otherwise available in a restricted DRM format, she surely will. Continue reading
Govt reducing access to information
From Sunday March 13, 2005 Guardian by Martha Mendoza writing on an Associated Press review of FOIA requests since 1998. Basically the review found that requests for information from the US federal govt are WAY up and percentage of information actually released is WAY down! Add to that scenario that more government information is being classified (or sensitive but unclassified), and the frequency of information being taken off of government websites is rising and you've got quite a recipe for dissaster. Continue reading
boingboing blogs article
boingboing has blogged our article about the future of the FDLP. Check out how many blogs have linked to it. By the way, congratulations on boingboing being named blog of the year!!! Continue reading
Historians ask Congress to suspend Nixon transfer
From the National Security Archive: Sixteen historians who were scheduled to speak at a now-cancelled conference at the Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda, California, today asked Congress to suspend plans for the transfer of the Nixon tapes and files from the National Archives in College Park, Maryland to the Yorba Linda facility. Read on... (Originally posted on the govinfo list!) Continue reading