02 August 2005
blog-a-thon! (more shameless promotion)
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been having a blog-a-thon for the past couple weeks to celebrate their 15th anniversary and their work on behalf of bloggers.
What does all this have to do with libraries? Well, a few months back, the American Library Association and EFF (among others) successfully challenged the FCC's broadcast flag mandate. (Essentially, the broadcast flag was a form of digital rights management (DRM) that would have meant that you could only play broadcast-flag- equipped media on approved players [sounds to me a bit like a Coca-Cola licensing agreement, wherein beverages can only be dispensed in approved cups]. For some idea of what it's like to deal with DRM, check out The Shifted Librarian's travails.)
EFF has been at the forefront of most, if not all, of the battles for free speech online and for civil liberties in general in the digital world. If you read at all in the biblioblogosphere (aka library blogland), you'll see them again.
In any case, I wrote up an entry of my own for the Blog-a-thon. If you're interested, you can read it over at my other blog.
What does all this have to do with libraries? Well, a few months back, the American Library Association and EFF (among others) successfully challenged the FCC's broadcast flag mandate. (Essentially, the broadcast flag was a form of digital rights management (DRM) that would have meant that you could only play broadcast-flag- equipped media on approved players [sounds to me a bit like a Coca-Cola licensing agreement, wherein beverages can only be dispensed in approved cups]. For some idea of what it's like to deal with DRM, check out The Shifted Librarian's travails.)
EFF has been at the forefront of most, if not all, of the battles for free speech online and for civil liberties in general in the digital world. If you read at all in the biblioblogosphere (aka library blogland), you'll see them again.
In any case, I wrote up an entry of my own for the Blog-a-thon. If you're interested, you can read it over at my other blog.
