The Shifted Librarian: Thursday, September 25, 2003- Library Associations Take on the Entertainment Industry
…it won’t be long before the entertainment industry actively turns on libraries. You can feel it coming, can’t you? 12-year olds honors students, 66-year old retired teachers, and librarians.

The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Many artists singing mixed tune when it comes to file-sharing fight
The recording artist Moby, on his Web site, offered a similar opinion, suggesting the music companies treat users of file-sharing services like music fans instead of criminals.
“How can a 14-year-old who has an allowance of $5 a [...]

Google Meets eBay: What Academic Librarians Can Learn from Alternative Information Providers
An interesting article from D-Lib, well worth reading.

PUBDOMAIN BREAD- Broadening the base of our Public Domain.

Calif. law protects us from security breaches
As of July 1, a new California statute requires any business with customers in California to alert those customers if anyone steals sensitive private information that could lead to identity theft (like your name combined with your Social Security number, driver’s license number, or financial account information). The notifications [...]

The Researching Librarian: Home
This site was created for librarians–new or experienced–who find themselves needing to perform research for purposes of publication, promotion, tenure, or other reasons. I hope that it also might be useful for other [...]

The Shifted Librarian: Monday, September 22, 2003- Could the Yale Libraries Stream Music to their Students?
A very cool idea curtesy of The Shifted Librarian

The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Many artists singing mixed tune when it comes to file-sharing fight
The recording artist Moby, on his Web site, offered a similar opinion, suggesting the music companies treat users of file-sharing services like music fans instead of criminals.
“How can a 14-year-old who has an allowance of $5 a [...]

Court scrutinizes P2P subpoena process | CNET News.com
Judge John Roberts questioned the RIAA’s expansive interpretation of the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which allows copyright holders to glean the identity of alleged infringers without filing a lawsuit first. Roberts said that if he left the door to his library ajar and someone entered, “that [...]

The Shifted Librarian: Tuesday, September 16, 2003- And Yet You’re Eliminating Libraries??
Make sure you have copies of this document to hand out to all of your patrons. Put these numbers on your web site. Include them in your newsletter. Autograph a copy and send it to your legislators.

RDF Site Summary (RSS) – inSilico- First came the announcement in July that Elsevier would expose their PRISM metadata in an RSS compliant manner. In doing so, libraries and end users could access tables of contents for Elsevier journals in their favorite tools.
…imagine being able to display the current issue’s TOC next to the [...]

EFF: Senator Brownback Introduces Digital Rights Bill- Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) today introduced the Consumers, Schools, and Libraries Digital Rights Management (DRM) Awareness Act of 2003. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) supports the bill as an important step toward balancing the rights of the public and the interests of entertainment industries in the age of [...]

EFF: RIAA Petition

To The United States Congress:

We are the customers and former customers of the member labels of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). We love music and will gladly pay a fair price for it, but we are outraged by the RIAA’s tactics in suing ordinary Americans for filesharing.

We condemn the RIAA’s [...]

Technology – story – canada.com network- Confessions of Kazaa downloader
Personally, I’ve sworn off Kazaa but my CD purchases will still be few and far between. Until the music industry comes up with a win-win business model for consumers and the labels, I’ll just listen to all my old CDs that have been collecting dust.
An honest [...]

Consumers strike back, sue RIAA- It’s likely the RIAA will have to admit that they don’t have the authority to release all claims, because they don’t have the power to stop these lawsuits, because they don’t own the copyrights.

O’Reilly Network: Hardball assessment of the future of media [Sep. 09, 2003]
Many people have predicted that peer-to-peer file-sharing will change the face of media, but this paper by Scott Jensen is the most thoroughgoing research I’ve seen into the commercial and artistic effects that peer-to-peer can potentially lead to. The paper is bold and futuristic, [...]

RIAA settles with 12-year-old pirate’s mother
The settlement was reached with the mother of 12-year-old Brianna Lahara, a user of the Kazaa file-sharing service. Lahara was featured on the cover of Tuesday’s New York Post newspaper, which described the girl as being scared and on the verge of tears when she discovered she was being sued.
Schoolgirl [...]

Databases–the next copyright battle? | CNET News.com
Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives are circulating a proposed bill that would prevent wholesale copying of school guides, news archives and other databases that do not enjoy copyright protection.
The proposed bill would provide a legal umbrella for publishers of factual information such as courtroom decisions and [...]

DRM Avoidance – September 8, 2003 – LibraryPlanet.com is a beautiful collection of quotes from knowledgable people around the web. The last one in particular puts it perfectly for me.

The Shifted Librarian: Monday, September 08, 2003- Apple: Libraries Circulating Digital Content Is “Impractical”
In other words, Apple (what appeared to be one of�the most customer-friendly and educational institution-friendly companies) doesn’t think enough of the “First Sale” doctrine to build support for it into its digital music product. To them, it’s “impractical” and you might, sort [...]

Nations to Develop Non-Windows Software
Japan, China and South Korea have agreed to cooperate in a project to boost research and development of software for operating systems other than industry leader Microsoft Corp.’s Windows, a Japanese trade ministry official said Friday.

Tech News – CNET.com–Rockin’ on without Microsoft
Sterling Ball, a jovial, plain-talking businessman, is CEO of Ernie Ball, the world’s leading maker of premium guitar strings endorsed by generations of artists ranging from the likes of Eric Clapton to the dudes from Metallica.
But since jettisoning all of Microsoft products three years [...]

Educated Guesswork: August 2003 Archives- What do you mean I can’t print?
There was no real reason to stop me from printing this file, but whenever there’s a question about whether to add some restriction or not, it’s easier just to add it than think about whether it’s necessary or not. Nobody ever got fired for [...]

Universal Music Group drops CD prices
The recording industry continues to attribute slumping music sales to online piracy, but Universal Music Group (UMG) has recently announced an initiative to spur consumers to spend more money in record stores. The commercial music giant is taking a novel approach: It’s dropping the price of CDs.
Emphasis mine.
So many [...]

RIAA to offer music download amnesty?
The report indicated that individuals who participate in the amnesty program would be required to sign a notarized affidavit promising to stop using peer-to-peer file sharing services to download copyrighted music, and would be required to delete all such music they’ve acquired.

Now There’s a mobile version of the Creative Librarian. I’ve use a MT-specific script to create dynamic versions of the index and entry pages rather than duplicate the entire site with stripped-down templates. The script was very easy to implement and adapt.