LibrarianActivist.org

Some talented and tech savvy lawyers crafted a letter that led to theRecording Industry Association of America voluntarily withdrawing a malicious lawsuit .

Here’s a quote:

“Your client take the position that my middle-aged, conservative clients should speculate regarding the identity of persons your clients’ claim used their AOL account to download pornographic-lyric gangsta rap tracks as predicate to possible case resolution. In an age of Wintel-virus created bot-farms, spoofs, and easily cracked WEP encrypted wireless home networks (among other easy hacks), the only tech-savvy response to such a request is, “You’ve got to be kidding.”"

end quote.

-PC | source Recording Industry vs. the People

LoudLit.org offers free MP3 audio books of classic works that you can download or read long with onscreen. (via MetaFilter)

Edit: For anyone interested, my co-editor, PC, also linked to a similar site in an earlier post of hers - LibriVox - which also provides MP3 files of books in the public domain and allows people to contribute their own readings as well.

- JH

It seems the BC Legislature library “is closing down indefinitely for a seismic upgrade, and there is widespread concern it won’t reopen,” according to the Victoria Times Colonist. The article explains that layoffs are expected but that jobs will be found for the folks who are in fact laid off — doesn’t sound like all 29 staff members are expected to come back to the new “upgraded” library…

It seems a bit shortsighted to close down a library of parliament. It’s parliament, not a corporation. MLAs need access to all the information that a parliamentary library provides, and the assumption that all relevant information is available online is made by those who don’t work in libraries or use them enough. Such assumptions undermine what we vote for: representatives who we count on to inform themselves adequately and then make decisions on our behalf. Hard to be informed without information, methinks.

Mind you, this is the same government that outsourced the management of British Columbians’ medical records to a Canadian subsidiary of an American corporation (Maximus, Inc.) and so made personal health information subject to the US PATRIOT Act. So I suppose this new lapse in information-handling judgement is hardly a surprise.

Gordon Campbell, the BC premier, would love to hear from you: premier *at* gov.bc.ca. Tell him, please, that people need information to make good decisions, and if librarians aren’t there to sift through the crap, MLAs are going to be wasting a heckuva lot of time either searching or missing the important bits. A search engine has never been a substitute for a librarian. Properly-funded parliamentary libraries are worth every penny they cost to run. And yes, they should be given seismic upgrades, but not if that upgrade is like turning a garden salad into a ceasar and then leaving the whole platter in the kitchen until closing. Bad metaphor? Sorry.

-SIO

I don’t post every petition I come across on here but this one is from a solid organization and it looks like it has some potential to at least get a legitimate hearing from top decision makers. So why not add your name to support this message?

—
Dear friend,

This Thursday, the environment ministers from the G8, the world’s biggest contributors to climate change, will be meeting in Germany. The outcome of this meeting is crucial to world’s response to global warming.

Avaaz.org has been invited to attend this meeting to present our climate change petition. A strong voice for action could help set the agenda for the G8. To help seize this opportunity, click below:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/climate_action_germany

The G8 is a summit of world leaders from the “Group of 8″ largest economies. Together, these countries account for 50% of global greenhouse gas emissions–the gasses that cause climate change. The full G8 summit is coming in June, but the agenda and outcome of this type of high-profile event is usually set far in advance–at meetings like the one this Thursday.

This year, the president of the G8 is German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Her environment minister, Sigmar Gabriel, is in charge of the ministers meeting Thursday. And at 4 pm on March 15th, we have a personal meeting with Mr. Gabriel to present our petition for binding emissions targets to stop catastrophic climate change.

Merkel has indicated an interest in making climate change a top priority. With a significant global petition, we can make the case that the world is ready for aggressive leadership on climate change–and pave the way for truly historic commitments at the G8 summit this June.

It’s a rare opportunity to have a global impact. Add your voice to the petition now:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/climate_action_germany

50,000 people from 131 countries have already demanded action. Our goal is to reach 100,000. Please sign the petition, forward this email to friends and family, and post the link on your blog–we only have a few days to make this statement count.

If we add our voices together, now, 2007 can become the year we took the first step to save the world.

With hope,

Ricken, David, Iain, Lee-Sean, Galit, Graziela, and the rest of the Avaaz.org team

Small press month! Better late than never, here’s the shout out to librarians, readers and aspiring authors.

The Small Press Centre in NYC quotes Alice Walker,
“as water to flowers, independent publishing to democracy.”

Check out the Small Press Month website for information on events and ideas for how to celebrate and support the importance of the small press in your community or library.

Parallel to the American event, the Toronto Small Press group is holding a fair in the T-Dot on Saturday March 26th.

And of course with cyberspace being the frontier for self-authorship and democracy, here’s a wee tip on a resource…

The Hesperian Foundation is a non-profit that provides resources to ‘help people take the lead’ in their own health care. Check it out to find ‘copyleft’ community health books for your downloading pleasure.

-PC-