Library Juice 1:21 - June 3, 1998
Contents: 1. Peter Gilbert's site on Environmental Scanning 2. Steve Bergson's list of online library serials 3. American Libraries Online news stories for June 1 (ad) 4. Pinakes: A Subject Launchpad 5. Gay/ Lesbian Reading List from PUBLIB list 6. News about the Divx video format 7. List of American political prisoners 8. Livermore Public Library sued for not filtering the internet 9. Yale C/AIM Web Style Guide 10. Sorry Day in Australia 11. _Uniform Crime Reports 1997 Preliminary Annual Release_--FBI [.pdf, 7p.] 12. Discussion of book banning experiences in small public libraries 13. Pigs That Fly - Metaphor for the information age 14. Act Two of The Electronic Disturbance Theater is June 10th 15. Keith Richards recovering from library related accident (actual truth) Quote of the week: "To prejudge other men's notions before we have looked into them is not to show their darkness but to put out our own eyes." -John Locke _______________________________________________________________________________ 1. Peter Gilbert's site on Environmental Scanning http://cwis.lawrence.edu/~gilbertp/mudd/ESCAN.HTML This is Peter Gilbert's work in progress on environmental scanning (which is a scary almost sci-fi term for managing a world of information, mainly electronic.) It is a generalist's resource page with articles on the concept of environmental scanning. _______________________________________________________________________________ 2. Steve Bergson's list of online library serials: http://www.fortunecity.com/skyscraper/gates/18/libpers.html Library and Information Science Periodicals on the Internet Last updated: May 25, 1998 "(This) list represents my attempt to produce a list of all major online periodicals that provide either a table of contents, abstracts or full-text articles. If I have left any sites out, please e-mail me the URL(s) at safran-can[at]geocities.com. I do not represent or necessarily endorse any of these publications." _______________________________________________________________________________ 3. American Libraries Online news stories for June 1 (ad) <http://www.ala.org/alonline/> * Former DCPL Head Plea Bargains Theft Charge * Arizona Librarians Edge Out Cyberporn Bill * Miami-Dade Director Mary Somerville Announces Retirement * Phone Companies to Pass Universal-Service Costs to Customers * Mom Sues Library to Restrict Kids' Web Access * Medical Librarians Return to Philadelphia for Centennial Conference * Akron-Summit County Launches Renovation Program * Fired Director Settles Out of Court * Bookstore Continues to Fight Kenneth Starr Subpoena * San Jose Greenlights City-University Library Merger * Wayne County Employees Seek to Unionize * Minnesota Libraries Awarded Technology Grants * Stolen Volumes Recovered in Greek Bookstore American Libraries' Web site also features the latest "Internet Librarian" columns by Karen Schneider; AL's "Career Leads" job ads; listings of conferences, continuing-education courses, exhibitions, and other events from AL's "Datebook"; and Tables of Contents for the current year. _______________________________________________________________________________ 4. Pinakes: A Subject Launchpad Pinakes links to 25 major Subject Gateways, plus 2 Multi-subject gateways. http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/pinakes/pinakes.html In ancient times, the Library of Alexandria was seen as a universal store of human knowledge. As the Library grew in size, however, it became increasingly difficult to locate relevant material. The poet Callimachus solved the problem by compiling a catalogue called The Pinakes. On a far smaller scale, this Web page hopes to provide a similar function for Internet resources, by linking to the major subject gateways, especially those in the UK. It could be a good starting point for serious Internet-based research. Agnes Guyon, EEVL Database Officer, Email: A.Guyon[at]hw.ac.uk Heriot-Watt University Library, Edinburgh, EH14 4AS. Tel: [+44](131) 451 3572 Fax: [+44] (131) 451 3164 Visit the Engineering Virtual Library http://www.eevl.ac.uk/ _______________________________________________________________________________ 5. Gay/ Lesbian Reading List from PUBLIB list The Humanities Department of the Tampa-Hillsborough Public Library wishes to thank all PUBLIB members who graciously sent URL's and bibliographies (or bookmarks) from their library in response to our request. Our first Gay & Lesbian Fiction bibliography is completed for June, and although it only contains works in our holdings, we are glad to send a copy to any library that is interested. Please email Robin Leigh at leighr[at]scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us if you want a copy. Because of time limitations, I chose to do an author list for Fiction, Drama, and Poetry, followed by a title list of literary collections, and a brief annotated list of new young adult fiction. I relied heavily on the bibliographies sent to me from Seattle Public Library, Dallas Public Library, Decatur Public Library, and bookmarks from Johnson County Library. Other important selection sources were reference and circulating titles in our system, especially *Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage (c1995)* and *Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time: An Anthology (c1995). Several PUBLIB respondents sent websites. I relied on the award titles listed at our ALA site. I have not visited all of the sites contributed but am listing them here for your information: ALA's Gay, Lesbian, & Bisexual Task Force: calvin.usc.edu/~trimmer/ala_book.html ALA's GLBT resources for librarians http://www.drizzle.com/~kathleen/wla/glbt.html Annotated titles presented at OLA/WLA Conference 4/97, includes links for Gay and Lesbian Fiction Web Sites (NYPL Gay & Lesbian Studies site) and booksellers. Selected Bibliography of Gay Fiction (Annotated) http://pubweb.nwu.edu/~vmccoy/bibliography/ Yahoo search using "gay" "literature" subheading "bibliographies" Sadly, my general searches on Alta Vista with keywords such as "gay" "fiction" "Young Adult" led to smut. So the terminology is very important. Probably "adult" was throwing those searches off base. Fiction_L archives http://www.webrary.org/rs/rsmenu.html Gay and Lesbian detectives in mystery novels: http://www.bookbrowser.com/Diverse/index.html Gay Asian Literature: http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/3821 Gay Latino Literature: http://www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/events/sw25/case9.html http://www.vms.utexas.edu/~demedina/biblio.htm Gay and Lesbian Resources page for Conference at University Saskatchewan: http://library.usask.ca/education/gay.html I hope this URL list will be of use to others. Thank you again for all of your support online. I am not a subscriber to PUBLIB, so if you wish to contact me email me directly, and if you send corrections or additions, in reference to this posting, please email me a copy. Best, Robin Leigh, Reference Librarian Humanities Department, Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library, 900 N. Ashley St., Tampa, FL 33602 leighr[at]scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us _______________________________________________________________________________ 6. News about the Divx video format Forwarded from a friend: Have you heard of the "Divx" format for video that Circuit City and a Hollywood law firm have developed? You can read good things about it at: http://www.divx.com/ One very bad thing about it is that allows movie studios to publish and still deny the public the fair use that is deliberately allowed by copyright law. In particular, libraries won't be able do offer the material for free viewing. If you want to know more, I can send you some info and pointers. If you know about Divx and don't like it, would you also be interested in some anti-Divx activities I'm planning? I'm trying to arrange it so people can spend as much or as little time as they like on it, and don't have to make firm commitments in advance. The first public launch of Divx will happen right here in the Bay Area, in a couple weeks. If we want to fight it, we're in the right place at the right time to make a real difference. _______________________________________________________________________________ 7. List of American political prisoners accesible at the Jericho 98 web site: http://www.jericho98.com/profiles.html Sent to the PLGNET-L by Chris Dodge in answer to a query. _______________________________________________________________________________ 8. Livermore Public Library sued for not filtering the internet The following news was sent to Web4Lib by PRO-filtering activist David Burt: On May 27, 1998, the Livermore (Calif.) Public Library became the first public library to be sued for failing to protect children from pornography. Earlier a lawsuit was filed in Florida against the Broward County Public Schools for allowing children to access pornography. The complaint, filed by a parent with the assistance of the Pacific Justice Institute , says that a minor accessed sexually explicit websites using the library's computers, downloaded images harmful to minors to a floppy disk, and then printed them out at a relative's house. The complaint asks for an "injunction against the City of Livermore preventing it or its agents, servants, and employees from spending any public funds on the acquisition, use, and/or maintenance of any computer system connect to the Internet or World Wide Web for which it allows any person to access, display, and/or print obscene material or for which it allows minors to access, displays, and/or print sexual material harmful to minors." Public Library Directors, take note: Fail to protect children, and you can be sued. Read the Full Complaint , Attorney Michael Millen's letter to the City of Livermore, and the Livermore City Attorney's response letter at: http://www.filteringfacts.org/liver.htm Read the Tri-Valley Hearld's coverage at: http://www.newschoice.com/WebNews/anghefpg2/98-05-29_m1as429.asp Library sued for not filtering Net By Janet Kornblum May 29, 1998, 2:00 p.m. PT http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C22579%2C00.html Web4Lib Information - http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Web4Lib/ ***************************************************************************** David Burt President, Filtering Facts Website: http://www.filteringfacts.org E-Mail: David_Burt[at]filteringfacts.org Phone/Fax: 503 635-7048 _______________________________________________________________________________ 9. Yale C/AIM Web Style Guide http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/ Less graphical entrance: http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/contents.html To guide anyone who wants to produce a well-designed web site, the Yale Center for Advanced Instructional Media (C/AIM) provides this style manual, which comfortingly states, "The basic elements of a document aren't complicated, and have almost nothing to do with Internet technology." C/AIM develops multimedia educational and communications programs; the Web Style Guide is an outgrowth of their web development projects. The Guide addresses the problem of creating Web sites that are both easy to use and full of complex content by applying sound design concepts derived from print media traditions. The Guide is broken into chapters on topics such as interface, site, and page design, web graphics, multimedia and animation, and also includes extensive bibliographies and a visual glossary of common interface icons such as buttons and check boxes. [DS] >From the Scout Report - http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/report/ _______________________________________________________________________________ 10. Sorry Day in Australia National Sorry Day http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/rsjproject/sorry/index.htm _Bringing Them Home_ http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/rsjproject/rsjlibrary/hreoc/stolen/ Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation http://www.austlii.edu.au/car/ Australia: The Divided Nation--_The Age_ http://www.theage.com.au/special/dividednation/index.html "Sorry Day," held on May 26, 1998 in Australia, was an attempt on the part of some Australians to come to grips with the policy of forced removal of Aboriginal children that took place for 150 years until the 1970s. The National Sorry Day site is provided by the Reconciliation and Social Justice Project of the Australian Legal Information Institute. The site contains background and an educational activities kit. The centerpiece, however, is full text access to _Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families_, which was tabled by the Australian Federal Parliament exactly one year before Sorry Day. The Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, made up of 25 members, over half of whom are Aborigines or Torres Strait Islanders, as well as members of the Commonwealth Parliament, maintains a site highlighted by its _Weaving the Threads: Progress Towards Reconciliation_ report to Parliament. _The Age_, a Melbourne newspaper, provides a series of articles chronicling Australia's racial divide. [JS] >From the Scout Report - http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/report/ _______________________________________________________________________________ 11. _Uniform Crime Reports 1997 Preliminary Annual Release_--FBI [.pdf, 7p.] http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucrann97.htm The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has released the preliminary 1997 edition of this report (available in Adobe Acrobat [.pdf] format only), a brief compendium of crime statistics for the US and its cities of over 100,000 people. Three of the report's four tables compare trends in various types of crime. The bulk of the report, however, is a table that enumerates eight different types of crimes, including murder, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and arson in cities over 100,000, during 1996 and 1997. Also included are crime index totals. Final figures will be available in Fall 1998 in the FBI's annual _Crime in the United States_ report. [JS] >From the Scout Report - http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/report/ _______________________________________________________________________________ 12. Discussion of book banning experiences in small public libraries >From the newsgroup soc.libraries.talk Jeffrey D Swope wrote: I have a strong interest in book banning. I am particularly interested in the subtle book banning that takes place during the collection development/acquisitions process. I wish to speak to one aspect of this issue specifically. Recently I spoke with the librarian of a small, rural library. During our conversation the topic of books pertaining to race, religion and sexuality in the children's and young adult collections came up. The librarian said that when she and her assistant choose books, they do not include books about certain religions, races and types of sexuality. When I asked her why, she informed me that there is no one in her community with an interest in those topics. I was slightly taken aback by the comment. I asked the librarian if she felt that by doing this they were limiting the youth of the community's experience and what ramifications doing so might have on these youth as they move out of the community into a widely diversified world. She did not feel that it was the public library's job to prepare children for the "rest of the world" but rather to supply information pertaining to the needs of the community. I can honestly say that I do not agree with the reasoning. However, I do understand the concept to some degree. I was wondering if any small, rural librarians could respond as to how they handle the same concerns. Often, if the topics are not espoused in a community it can cause problems for the librarian. What do you do? How do you handle this? I would be interested in your opinions and approaches. -------------------- "Bob Jones" replied, There are a couple of things at work in many small public libraries: 1. A reluctance to rock the boat by placing controversial materials in the library, especially in the children's or YA collections. 2. A prevalence of non-professional "librarians" who have no concept of intellectual freedom or censorship providing children's services, including materials selection. 3. A fear of a public relations disaster if any local individual or organization goes on a rampage against "inappropriate" materials being made available to children. 4. The individual librarian applying his/her personal standards to the library's collections. 5. Undue influence exerted by library board members or community leaders to control what goes into the library. When I first came to my present library, a parent asked us to get "Daddy's Roommate" and "Heather Has Two Mommies" on interlibrary loan. I suggested to our "children's librarian" (who had no formal education in library science) that we buy both books. She threatened to quit. Later on she did, but not over a censorship issue. I suspect her attitude is not uncommon in small libraries. In defense of non-degreed "children's librarians," I previously worked with one whom I would compare favorably with any professional children's librarian I have known. I have added copies of "The Unabomber Manifesto" and "The Turner Diaries" to our collection. The former has never been checked out in almost 2 years, the latter has been checked out 5 times since last September. Howard Stern's "Miss America" has been checked out 20 times, but now is missing from the shelf. We are the only one of 41 libraries in our union catalog to own any of these titles. We have had no formal complaints about any of these books. We have been fortunate that there have been no public campaigns to remove "objectionable" materials from our library. This is a pretty conservative community, but I guess it's mostly a passive conservatism. I can understand librarians worrying about their budgets or their jobs, but that's a poor excuse for intellectual cowardice. _______________________________________________________________________________ 13. Next: Pigs That Fly? Metaphor for the information age Andrew Kimbrell, founder of the International Center for Technology Assessment in Washington, D.C., describes one of the "classic" experiments in genetic engineering this way: Dr. Vernon Pursel inserted the human growth gene in a pig. Pursel hoped to create giant pigs that would be major meat producers. The problem was that though the human growth gene was in every cell of the pig's body it did not act in the manner the scientists expected. Instead of making the pig larger it made it squat, cross-eyed, bow- legged, smaller than an average pig, with huge bone mass, a truly wretched product of science without ethics. Pursel tried to find a silver lining in his experiment gone wrong by claiming that the pig was leaner. Pursel's argument was that people are worried about cholesterol, so maybe we can sell this as lean pig. Did he really think the public was ready for pork chops with human genes? That pig strikes me as a good metaphor for the constructions of the Information Age. The prevailing notion is that we have this massive collection of information -- exemplified by several hundred thousand snippets of human genetic code -- which we can merrily pass from one database to another, inserting this piece here and that piece there. But there is no such thing as an "objective piece of information". Like a word in a sentence, a bit of information *means* a particular thing only within a given context. Pursel's pig symbolizes the kind of result you get when you ignore context and try to build things from the bottom up -- that is, when you start with the reduced products of your sophisticated analyses, forgetting what it was you were analyzing in the first place. Context in the present case means, to begin with, the pig itself. Pursel was willing to see fragments of DNA -- and even lean pork chops -- but did not care to see the pig. Such is the technological mindset we now trust to re-engineer the human being. Exactly the same trust is at work wherever information is glorified as the decisive form of capital, the basis for problem-solving, and the fundamental ingredient of all knowledge. (Kimbrell's remark, incidentally, occurs in a remarkable new book from the Sierra Club, called *Turning Away from Technology*, edited by Stephanie Mills. I hope to review it in the near future.) [This is from Netfuture #72. - http://www.oreilly.com/~stevet/netfuture/ ] _______________________________________________________________________________ 14. Act Two of The Electronic Disturbance Theater is June 10th >From A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E - http://www.ainfos.ca/ Remember that Wednesday, JUNE 10, is Act Two of The Electronic Disturbance Theater. For updates as JUNE 10 approaches click here http://www.nyu.edu/projects/wray/ecd.html The Electronic Disturbance Theater proprosal for SWARM has been accepted as one of the featured projects for the Ars Electronica 98 Festival (a group based in Linz, Austria). An Ars Electronica web page already links to the JUNE 10 action. http://web.aec.at/infowar/index.html "Ars Electronica - a Festival for Art,Technology and Society - was initiated in 1979 and focuses on electronic art and media theory. This year's theme of the Festival is "INFOWAR". The Festival '98 takes place from the 7th - 12th of September." http://web.aec.at/fest/feste.html Opening these connections in Europe is a clear sign that The Electronic Disturbance Theater is acting on the global stage. We are making inroads into the computer/arts communities across international borders. People skilled in computers and the arts are becoming more aware of the Zapatistas, Chiapas, and the Mexican government's counter insurgency war. While at the same time computerized activists within the world wide pro-Zapatista movement are becoming more aware of uses for the Net beyond merely a communication device for transmitting email. The Net is becoming a site for non-violent direct action. We are only witnessing its early forms. Ideally, hopefully soon, maybe by this fall, The Electronic Disturbance Theater will become one of many small "affinity groups" that periodically (regularly) act in concert, at the same time, against the same site, but maintain autonomy and independence as their own group. In this sense, we again want to copy the earlier civil disobedience movements that relied on an affinity group structure for carrying out mass nonviolent direct action. In effect, this is what is meant by SWARM. As an analogy, think of us and our actions as those of a just a handful of bees or wasps. Our stingers, are, so far, the FloodNet devices that send out a little sting, or automated electronic pulse. As just a handful of bees, with just a handful of stingers, stinging our opponents, we may be a nuisance and a pest, but we clearly are a force that can be dealt with or even ignored (perhaps so far). But if we become a SWARM of bees and wasps that go after a site, or a series of related sites, all at the same time, but from many different directions, using different types of stingers with varying degrees of potency, then we become a more powerful force that sends a surge of energy across the Net, as opposed to sending out a handful of pulses. For those postmodernists in the crowd, consider Deleuze and Guattari's "plateaus" or "assemblages" that occur when certain "lines of flight" converge. (1) A SWARM is a massive convergence of a multiplicity of lines of flight arising momentarily to send a powerful surge (i.e., message) to then quickly disperse and disappear. Appearing and disappearing and reappearing. Moving nomadically as need be. So we need a thousand points of light. A thousand plateaus. We need an array of FloodNet devices. We need the FloodNet electronic pulse device to be just one tool, one machine, one computerized act within a spectrum of tools, machines, and acts. Like the tinkerers who meddled with metal and formed the first swords and shields, like the Mongols and other early nomadic warriors who wandered and roamed, we need more electronic tinkerers to meddle with today's electronic metal, to create new tools, new machines, that enable new acts for today's nomadic warriors who wander on the Net. Below is the article. - Stefan Wray (1) Deleuzes, Gilles and Felix Guattari (1987) A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press From: Stefan Wray <sjw210[at]is8.nyu.edu> --------------------------------------------------------------------- Hey, Ho, We Won't Go Civil Disobedience Comes to the Web By: Jeanne Carstensen When I think of civil disobedience I think of an environmentalist chained to a redwood or anti-war activists stretched out on the tracks in front of trains loaded with weapons headed for Central America. There are bodies on the line. And although most acts of civil disobedience are nonviolent, there is always the possibility that blood will be spilled. So when I read a message on a Bay Area events e-mail list I subscribe to announcing a "virtual sit-in" at the website of Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo on April 10 to protest repression against the Zapatistas in Chiapas, the idea sounded strange. Civil disobedience in cyberspace? Will it work without the breath and bulk of angry bodies? The concept "electronic civil disobedience" emerged from the sophisticated global internet activism of the Zapatistas and their supporters. Since their uprising in 1994, the Zapatistas have taken advantage of the web to circulate rapid-fire e-mail from the charismatic Commandante Marcos about conditions inside Chiapas. And Zapatista supporters have flooded web sites and discussion groups with human rights reports and articles that are updated on a daily basis. The web has been so influential in the Zapatista struggle, that the conflict is often referred to as a kind of information war. "This is a war of public opinion, a war of declarations and political positions..." a top national security officer in Mexico said in a recent New York Times article ("Mexico Sees Both Carrot and Stick Fail in Chiapas," 5/17/98). And on the web, the Zapatistas are winning. Every day a community of savvy cyber-activists helps spread the message of the largely indigenous movement in southern Mexico to the entire world. Two of those activists, Stefan Wray and Ricardo Dominguez, are the main proponents of "electronic civil disobedience" and the organizers of the recent "virtual sit-ins" supporting the Zapatista cause. Wray hosts a web site dedicated to the theory and practice of electronic civil disobedience and Dominguez is the editor of The Thing, a small ISP for an artists virtual community. Ricardo Dominguez, 39, is a former actor and long-time political activist. He talks about electronic civil disobedience in terms of "theater." In fact, the series of ECD actions Wray and Dominguez have planned are referred to as "Electronic Disturbance Theater." Like the Yippies, Greenpeace, Act Up and other activists who have used the media to draw attention to their causes, Dominguez appreciates the power of narrative to capture the public attention. "We began to notice that 80s activist tactics were getting less media attention," Dominguez explained. "Power had shifted from the streets to the information highway so we started thinking about how to create political gestures on the web equivalent to lying down in the street and refusing to move." The idea of conducting "virtual sit-ins" actually originated in Italy with the Autonomous Digital Coalition, which suggested that Zapatista supporters on the internet connect their browsers to a pre-selected site at a certain hour and manually hit the reload button over and over again as a form of protest. The intention was to temporarily overload the capacity of the server, thus disrupting service and effectively "blockading" the entrance to the targeted website. But Dominguez and some other activists decided to take the virtual sit-in process a step further by automating it. They created a website called Flood Net that uses a Java applet to automatically reload the web page of the targeted site every three seconds. When the first virtual sit-in was held on April 10 at Zedillo's web site, all the cyber-protesters had to do was connect their browsers to Flood Net at the appointed hour. Because a stats program is installed on the Flood Net site, Wray and Dominguez know that 8141 surfers hit their site that day and participated in the sit-in. Some disruption in Zedillo's site was noted by the activists, and the New York Times Cyber Law Journal on May 1 quoted a Mexican Embassy official who acknowledged that there had been some disturbance to Zedillo's site on April 10. Another virtual sit-in was held on May 10, this time targeting the White House website. Wray and Dominguez didn't notice any significant disruption to the White House site, which Dominguez assumes "has a more robust infrastructure" than Zedillo's site. "This is experimental," Stefan Wray explained about the sit-in process. "We don't know what critical mass is for a site to be blocked." The interesting thing about the virtual sit-in tactic is that it makes use of a public function available to any internet user. Reloading a page again and again, while capable of causing disruption, isn't hacking into the system. "We're interested in creating public gestures in the public sphere of the internet," Dominguez emphasized. Civil disobedience is defined in Robert Seeley's Handbook of Non-Violence as "the refusal on principle to obey an unjust law." One of its main goals "is to influence public opinion to change an unjust law or abolish unjust policy." Mike Godwin, staff counsel to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that a virtual sit-in is "no more or less illegal than tying up the White House switchboard." The law makes a distinction between harrassing content and actions. "It's legal when calling in to voice a complaint and illegal when you're purposefully trying to jam the switchboard." In the May 1 New York Times Cyber Law Journal article, however, internet consultant Mark D. Rasch said that "participants in electronic sit-ins run a risk of violating a federal law... [that] makes it a crime to intentionally distribute a program...with the intent to cause damage to another's web site." "Is it illegal to refresh a web site over and over?" Wray answered when I asked him about the legality of virtual sit-ins. "I don't see any clear directive that says this is illegal. We're walking into territory that hasn't been clearly regulated or controlled so it's hard for us or the government to know where we stand." Although the Electronic Disturbance Theater sit-ins are designed to pressure the Mexican government to respect the human rights of the indigenous communities in Chiapas that the Zapatistas represent, some people see risks in restricting free speech on the web to achieve that goal: "Why do you need to shut out anyone from speaking out on the web when you can use the same medium to express your own views?" Mike Godwin said. Maureen Mason, program director of the Institute for Global Communications (IGC), an ISP for progressive organizations and individuals based in San Francisco, drew distinctions between different kinds of possible civil disobedience actions. Last July, IGC was the target of a "mail-bombing" campaign against one of the websites they host, the Basque Euskal Herria Journal. The huge volume of repetitive e-mail overwhelmed their server, and they were forced to suspend the Basque web site in order to continue to serve their other clients. IGC has issued a statement condemning mail-bombing, but Mason believes that political speech itself should be protected. "The expression of a political opinion should be allowed, but if technology is used to shut down a communication service all together, then it's like burning the bookstore to protest one book," she said. It's too early to predict how electronic civil disobedience will evolve on the web, and whether it will ever have the same impact as a group of anti-war activists smearing human blood on a missle, as they did last week at Andrews Air Force Base. There's something so powerful about people using their own bodies to protest injustice, and that will never happen on the net. But in our increasingly virtual world, electronic civil disobedience is a timely tactic. Jeanne Carstensen is Entertainment Editor of the Gate. When not trying to escape to Costa Rica, where she worked as a shortwave radio producer for six years, she likes to eat arroz con pollo, read Jeanette Winterson, and occasionally live out her fantasy of being a nurse. jeannec[at]sfgate.com _______________________________________________________________________________ 15. Keith Richards recovering from library related accident (actual truth) by Daniel Frankel May 29, 1998, 12:25 p.m. PT It's not as tragic as when Spinal Tap lost a drummer in a bizarre gardening accident, but another legendary British band, the Rolling Stones, will be out of comish for a bit while their five-decade-chemistry-experiment-gone-awry guitar player, Keith Richards, recovers from a freakish library incident. Honest. Seems the 53-year-old wrinkled rocker got high and hurt himself again. No, not that kind of high. According to his agent's statement, Richards fell off a ladder while trying to retrieve a book in the library of his Connecticut home last weekend. The statement said Richards "sustained injuries to his ribs and chest after the fall," but no other details about his condition were given other than "he had not been drinking" at the time of the spill. No word on what title caused Richards' tumble. As for Mick Jagger, Ron Wood and the rest of the geriatric band, their European Bridges to Babylon tour, scheduled to start Friday, has been delayed until Richards comes off the disabled list. How long will the delay last? "During the next week, doctors will give promoters of the tour a clean indication of Keith Richards' recovery period, and an announcement will follow if any more European concerts are affected," the Richards statement adds. For now, four shows in Germany and Croatia have been postponed. According to Reuters, this latest setback is similar to the last time the 35-year-old rock band canceled several shows. That was back in 1990, also in Europe, when one of Richards' fingers got infected after he punctured it on a guitar string. As Keith heals this time, we have one question: If you're a doctor, what kind of pain medication do you prescribe to this guy? _______________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ | | | # # ##### ##### ## ##### # # | | # # # # # # # # # # # # | | # # ##### # # # # # # # | | # # # # ##### ###### ##### # | | # # # # # # # # # # # | | ###### # ##### # # # # # # # | | | | | | # # # # #### ###### | | # # # # # # # | | # # # # # ##### | | # # # # # # | | # # # # # # # # | | #### #### # #### ###### | | | | | | http://www.libr.org/juice/ | | | | Items appearing in Library Juice are copyright-free, | | so feel free to share them with colleagues and friends. | | Library Juice is a free weekly publication edited by | | Rory Litwin. Original senders are credited wherever | | possible; opinions are theirs. Your comments and | | suggestions are welcome. mailto:Juice[at]libr.org | |__________________________________________________________|
Web Page created by Text2Web v1.3.6 by Dev Virdi
http://www.virdi.demon.co.uk/
Date: Thursday, October 29, 1998 12:09 PM