Becky Hogge writes in Opendemocracy about a new digital rights organization, The Open Rights Group, based in Westminster, Brussels and Geneva. Like the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the United States, the Open Rights Group will address issues such as access, freedom of speech online, and file sharing. Unlike the EFF — which was initially bankrolled by a small group of beleivers — the Open Rights Group was started by a group of 1,000 subscribers who will each pay five pounds a month to get the organization going.
Monthly Archives: December 2005
katrina archive on internet archive
The Internet Archive has just established an archive dedicated to preserving the online response to the Katrina catastrophe. According to the Archive:
The Internet Archive and many individual contributors worked together to put together a comprehensive list of websites to create a historical record of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina and the massive relief effort which followed. This collection has over 25 million unique pages, all text searchable, from over 1500 sites. The web archive commenced on September 4th.
If you try to link to the Internet Archive today, you might not get through, because everyone is on the site talking about the Grateful Dead’s decision to allow free downloading
freedom forum founder wants less freedom online
For just over four months, a biography of Freedom Forum Founder John Seigenthaler that appeared on Wikipedia, Biography.com, and Answers.com claimed — incorrectly — that he was once a suspect in the assasination of both John and Robert Kennedy. Last month, Seigenthaler found out about it, and he got angry. Very angry.
In fact, he got angry enough to write a November 29 editorial in USA Today complaining about Federal laws that protect online corporations like Wikiepedia from libel lawsuits and protect the anonymity of the person who published false information about him online.
Don’t get me wrong: it’s certainly a serious problem that Seigenthaler’s biography contained false information (I haven’t been able to determine yet whether the assassination rumor is an artifact of the vast Kennedy conspiracy rumor mill, or whether it was a pure invention of the phony biographer — anyone know?). And the flaws in Wikipedia are a real issue. But I’m still astonished that one of the nation’s great free speech advocates seems to be advocating systemic changes to legislation that protects not only prank speech, but political speech online.
Is it that Seigenthaler feels (but does not say) that there is a fundamental difference between print media and online? Or is this a case of someone knowing Seigenthaler’s Achille’s heel, and publishing the one rumor about him that would cause him to seemingly contradict his basic principles?
google print on deck at radio open source
Open Source, the excellent public radio program (not to be confused with “Open Source Media”) that taps into the blogosphere to generate its shows, has been chatting with me about putting together an hour on the Google library project. Open Source is a unique hybrid, drawing on the best qualities of the blogosphere — community, transparency, collective wisdom — to produce an otherwise traditional program of smart talk radio. As host Christopher Lydon puts it, the show is “fused at the brain stem with the world wide web.” Or better, it “uses the internet to be a show about the world.”
The Google show is set to air live this evening at 7pm (ET) (they also podcast). It’s been fun working with them behind the scenes, trying to figure out the right guests and questions for the ideal discussion on Google and its bookish ambitions. My exchange has been with Brendan Greeley, the Radio Open Source “blogger-in-chief” (he’s kindly linked to us today on their site). We agreed that the show should avoid getting mired in the usual copyright-focused news peg — publishers vs. Google etc. — and focus instead on the bigger questions. At my suggestion, they’ve invited Siva Vaidhyanathan, who wrote the wonderful piece in the Chronicle of Higher Ed. that I talked about yesterday (see bigger questions). I’ve also recommended our favorite blogger-librarian, Karen Schneider (who has appeared on the show before), science historian George Dyson, who recently wrote a fascinating essay on Google and artificial intelligence, and a bunch of cybertext studies people: Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, N. Katherine Hayles, Jerome McGann and Johanna Drucker. If all goes well, this could end up being a very interesting hour of discussion. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: Open Source just got a hold of Nicholas Kristof to do an hour this evening on Genocide in Sudan, so the Google piece will be pushed to next week.