digital rights

In Protest Of SOPA And PIPA

January 17, 2012

This blog will go dark tomorrow to protest crimes perpetrated by people who know all about the internet aided by their toadies in government who know nothing of it. From SOPAStrike.com: On Jan 24th, Congress will vote to pass internet censorship in the Senate, even though the vast majority of Americans are opposed. We need [...]

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Sharing eBooks

September 26, 2011

Today’s xkcd: I’ve lost grey matter beating my head on the walls of this blog and elsewhere on the internet that the advent of eBooks does not signal or signify the death of paper books, nor should it. Anyone who wants paper books to go away is in the business of reading for the sake [...]

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My Eulogy For Michael Stern Hart

September 14, 2011

I promised I’d see him through to the end. He wasn’t there any more, but being a pallbearer was my way of keeping that promise. In case I tripped and fell while carrying the substantial coffin, I asked our friend Ben Stone to be on standby. Ben, “Surprisingly, they’re not that heavy. The important part [...]

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Michael Hart Remembered Online – UPDATED

September 8, 2011

This post serves as a roundup of good online articles on and tributes to Michael S. Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg and close friend, who passed away two days ago. If you come across any that are not here, please link to them in the comments. So much love ad respect out there for Michael; [...]

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Michael Stern Hart, 1947-2011

September 7, 2011

Founder of Project Gutenberg, Michael Hart, passed away unexpectedly at his home in Urbana, Illinois yesterday. The world has lost a true renaissance man, the one who first gave us the gift of electronic books (eBooks). I have lost my oldest friend and confidant in these United States. Read Michael’s obituary, wonderfully written by Greg [...]

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Free Access To Scientific Literature By Whom?

July 21, 2011

The Journal of the Medical Library Association published a study called “The impact of free access to the scientific literature: a review of recent research” You can read the whole paper at the link provided, thus saving us all from laughing at the irony of a paper on open access locked behind a paywall. The [...]

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This Week In Online Absurdity

July 21, 2011

Never mind that Swartz is a researcher, JSTOR makes it difficult for users to download articles to which they have rightful access and the government (your taxpayer money) pays for much of the research that ends up in journals not made available to you. Culture is anti-rivalrous as the great Nina Paley likes to point [...]

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What’s At Stake In The Georgia State University Copyright Case

May 31, 2011

From The Chronicle of Higher Education A closely watched trial in federal court in Atlanta, Cambridge University Press et al. v. Patton et al., is pitting faculty, libraries, and publishers against one another in a case that could clarify the nature of copyright and define the meaning of fair use in the digital age … [...]

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This Week In The Fight For Digital Culture

February 26, 2010

Much in the way of interesting and infuriating has gone on this week in the areas of intellectual property, privacy, digital rights, open source and Googlization. A lot of it comes down to the rights of citizens and businesses in a networked society both parties helped create, the crucial need to protect the public domain, [...]

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What The iPad Might Have Done For Me

January 28, 2010

Needless to say, you’ve all heard about Apple’s iPad by now.  I’m certain Steve Jobs’s unveiling speech yesterday was more popular than Obama’s State of the Union address, judging simply from the crazy high TPM (tweets per minute) related to the new gadget’s drop.  (Disclosure: I contributed to said traffic with 9 tweets and around [...]

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