Further legislation for a US Broadband map

After reading through and hearing some reports that the stimulus plan was including a broadband provision I was, of course, curious to see what that provision contained. Unfortunately the reports that I had heard were only saying that the broadband provision was to spread broadband service to unserved areas of America (not very helpful reports). Which I completely support. However how are 'they' to know who is unserved? Several states have taken upon themselves to conduct a broadband service map. Yet the federal government had not until late last year decided a map was important (see P.L. 110-385 Broadband Data Improvement Act).

In the latest version of the stimulus package available to me, February 10, 2009, there is a provision that again calls for the creation of a US Broadband Map (Title II-Section 201(l)(9 and 10)). This is in conjunction with the Broadband Data Improvement Act passed last year (P.L. 110-385). Granted P.L. 110-385 has not had enough time to full implements. I am rather happy that there is a definite timetable within the stimulus package for release of a broadband map of the United States. Except the time tables do not really match up for funding broadband expansion and release of the map. The stimulus plans says that all funds for the Broadband Technology Opportunities provision are to be dispensed by 2010. However the map has to be release no later than 2 years after the passage of the stimulus plan.

Maybe we are putting the cart before the horse on this one. Perhaps it would be better, or would have been better if the language is not changed, to complete the map first.

Intellectual Property and the American Individual

So much of my studies this semester have centered on copyright and, in a sense, the American individual. To simplify, which may pose issues later, copyright is a property right held by an individual or a single entity to control their creative works. It is more or less a concept that individuals have control over those works. However, the explosion of creative works based on existing works, YouTube etc..., endless copyright battles, and the issue of 'pirating' have made me wonder if a new generation of Americans has begun to change the notion that intellectual property is owned by society and not the individual.

I cannot say for certain, but I very much doubt many cases of copyright infringement are done out of hate for copyright, the idea that intellectual property is overvalued (I don't want to pay for the latest hit song), completely misunderstanding or lack of education on the subject of intellectual property (colleges are stressing copyright at orientations for first years), or the simple rebellious nature of youth. (Those are certainly possibilities on my mind.)

Instead, I am interested to know if there is a fundamental shift that the newest American individual is treating intellectual property as a common good/commodity freely available for use. This would constitute a very marked shift in the American individual which has historically valued their private property and acted to protect said property by instituting such legal protections as copyright.

*Just a loose idea that struck me after being up for almost 36 hours. Also please ignore spelling, grammatical errors. Thank you! *

Facebook

As I was joining groups on Facebook, I went through and searched for schools of library science.

I am surprised that there are still several schools without a Facebook page. *I don't like MySpace much, so I did not search there*

So we are confronted with library science programs striving to stress the importance of Web 2.0 technologies, yet not embracing them....makes me ponder a bit.

Online Safety for Children

I stumbled on this good report that focuses on technological measures that could be used to help protect children in the online environment. Though I hate to see any sort of solution affect all Internet users, most of the measures appear to work at a local end user level.

It is also refreshing to see that the report identifies and states that technologies cannot provide a complete solution. (No 'Magic Bullet' I am afraid) Rather technologies used in conjunction with many other things, such as a parent's involvement in their child's online usage would provide the best chances of mitigating online dangers.

Really the best portion of the report, is the literature review, the rest is pretty mundane. It would be a great piece to 'bread crumb' from if anyone is starting a paper this semester on online safety for children.

REPORT(PDF)

The report is from the Internet Safety Technical Task Force-which includes some very heavy hitters in the realm of online communications.

Copyright infringement

Professor Tomas Lipinski hinted at a great research topic during a visit to the seminar class I am taking this semester. However, it was the consensus of the seminar class that the information for the research may not be available because of legal or public relations issues.

So I have come to the blogospere to ask if anyone has any information about the following data or how to obtain the data.

Under 17 U.S.C 512(c)(3)(a), "a notification of claimed infringement must be a written communication provided to the designated agent of a service provider". In this case I am specifically looking only for data from higher education institutions; colleges, universities, etc. I would like to know the number of notices and, though I doubt possible, the outcome of those notices. How many instances was 17 U.S.C 512(c)(3)(g) asserted.

My immediate thought it that the various Freedom of Information Acts from state to state can be used to obtain this data. Has/does anyone have any information or knowledge of gathering this data?

The goal of this investigation is to see how the process is working for analysis purposes.

Illinois Library Records Confidentiality Act

For one of my classes we were to go through our 'home' state's confidentiality/privacy statutes pertaining to libraries and identify any changes we would like to see made. Originally I was going to analyze Oklahoma's statute, but decided to look into the statute for Illinois. From this exercise I discovered a few changes that I would like to see made to the statute.

First, the statue limits confidentiality to only registration and circulation records in the library. The issue is that patrons use many items and services provided by the library without the resource being circulated. For instance if you were to browse/read through a book without circulating the item, then that would not be considered confidential. Thus some expansion is needed. Especially as the statute does not contain any protections for electronic access to resources. As the statute reads search logs and logs of websites would not be considered confidential and thus would not need a court order for law enforcement personnel to obtain.

Second, the immunity provision given in Section 1(b-5) grants libraries immunity, but sounds as if it also grants law enforcement immunity as well. If a law enforcement officer were to ask for confidential information in a nefarious manner, the statute reads as if it also provides immunity to the law enforcement officer. This is troubling from the standpoint that an officer could abuse their power to obtain information without consequence from this statute.

Overall, the statute seems very well written. With some of the updates that I have made for my class report, I think the statute would fall into line with current thinking on confidentiality in a library.