Monday, Geist wrote an article touching on some of the major (and disappointing) aspects of bill C-60, An Act to amend the Copyright Act. I guess I was out in space when I read the portion of the Act that talks about interlibrary loan… A couple of posts ago I showed some optimism at the […]

Digital-Copyright Canada has set up a page, KillBillC-60, to inform Canadians on the dangers of Bill C-60, an Act to amend the Copyright Act. They point out that the FAQ on bill C-60 written by the Government of Canada is “encumbered” with DRM. I tried to copy and paste the information from the FAQ […]

This is the title of an event that will be held on July 3rd at the Université du Québec à Montréal to discuss the implications of the Canadian Copyright reform. The main event is a presentation by Richard Stallman (originator of GNU) and a panel discussion with free software experts. The presentation will be […]

The Corner House, a very interesting think tank in the UK, has produced a briefing paper entitled “Who Owns the Knowledge Economy: Political Organising behind TRIPS”. It’s a very enlightening look at the history behind TRIPS, and how a group of corporate elites managed to enforce this intellectual property agenda on all the other countries […]

This year’s Access 2005 is taking place in mid-October in Edmonton. Some pretty good presentations are taking place, including some by copyright guru Michael Geist, tons of stuff on Open Source solutions for libraries, and one on social classification.

In the July/August 2005 issue of Utne, Chris Dodge, (who is, among other things, Utne’s librarian), writes two wonderful library related articles:
The first, titled Knowledge for Sale? Are America’s public libraries on the verge of losing their way? touches on many aspects of all that is failing in today’s public libraries. This includes lack of […]

The Government Accountability Office has released a study providing an overview of RFID technology, discussing security, and privacy issues. Not surprinsingly, it has found that:The use of tags and databases raises important security considerations related to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the data on the tags, in the databases, and in how this information […]

What a great idea! Librarians Without Borders (LWB) was founded by the MLIS programme at the University of Western Ontario. Its mission:LWB is an organization that strives to improve access to information resources regardless of language, by forming partnerships with community organizations in developing countries.
Their first project is in Angola, helping to develop a medical […]

With the upcoming ALA conference, the Friends of Cuban Libraries are stepping up their pressure on the president to support the “independent libarians” in Cuba. The group has sent a letter to the ALA president asking her to take a stand on the “persecution of Cuba’s independent library movement”, and denouncing the extremists in ALA […]

The Canadian government has table its copyright bill, bill C-60. Michael Geist has written a short introduction to the bill, and promises more analysis in the days to come. According to Geist, Canada, not to be outdone by copyright laws in other countries, has pandered to big business leaving individual Canadians with fewer […]