Intellectual Freedom News 1/5/2021
Highlights
- Remember to Report Censorship for 2020!
- Updated! Access to Digital Resources and Services Q&A
- Be the Change: How to Support BIPOC Librarians and Writers of Color
Censorship
- Ohio Lawmakers Attempt to Ban Anime Book, Author Susan J. Napier Responds | Crunchyroll
- Warden corrects misstep on access to books | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
- Sibley High School pulls two books from English classes, citing complaints | TwinCities.com
- Arizona School Considers Removing Slaughterhouse Five From Classrooms | NCAC
Privacy & Cybersecurity
- US plans major expansion of facial recognition authority at airports | The Verge
- New York City Council votes to prohibit businesses from using facial recognition without public notice | Venture Beat
- Community Needs to Protect Library Freedoms | Jackson Hole News
- Russian hackers hit US government using widespread supply chain attack | Ars Technica
- The ACLU is suing for more information about the FBI’s phone-hacking lab | The Verge
- Powerful Mobile Phone Surveillance Tool Operates in Obscurity Across the Country | The Intercept
- Hospitals are leaving millions of sensitive medical images exposed online | ZDNet
- Civil Liberties Questions Plague Baltimore’s “Spy Plane” Experiment | Baltimore Magazine
- The year we gave up on privacy: Our lives moved online in 2020. Too bad privacy laws didn’t | Vox
More privacy news is available at the Choose Privacy Every Day blog.
First Amendment, Free Speech, & Civil Liberties
- Reclaiming Free Speech for Democracy and Human Rights in a Digitally Networked World | New America
- A Cheerleader’s Vulgar Message Prompts a First Amendment Showdown | The New York Times
- Supreme Court Denies Kentucky Religious Academy’s Challenge to School Closing Order | Education Week
- Appeals Court Rules for Religious Schools in Latest Challenge to Pandemic Restrictions | Education Week
- Hate-Crime Bills Gain Support in South Carolina, Arkansas | Wall Street Journal
- Cuomo Signs Law Banning Confederate Flags, Other Hate Symbols On State Property | CBS New York
- Haas, citing First Amendment, says no to Rebel flag ban | Portsmouth Daily Times (OH)
- In victory for LGBTQ families, Supreme Court denies Indiana birth certificate case | NBC News
Copyright
- Netflix Settles ‘Enola Holmes’ Lawsuit With Conan Doyle Estate | The Hollywood Reporter
- Proposed bill could turn streaming copyrighted material into a felony in the US | GameDaily.biz
- Can scholarly pirate libraries bridge the knowledge access gap? An empirical study on the structural conditions of book piracy in global and European academia | Infojustice
- Corellium notches partial victory in Apple iOS copyright case | Ars Technica
Access
- Introducing the Open Library Explorer, a New Experimental Digital Library Interface to Search and Sort Millions of Books | InfoDocket/School Library Journal
- The Biden FCC Needs to Tackle Exorbitant Jail and Prison Call Prices | Slate
Net Neutrality & Broadband Access
- Schools Work to Speed Up Internet in Rural Homes | The Wall Street Journal
- Connecticut Gives Every Student a Computer and Home Internet to Close the Digital Divide | EdSurge News
- With Terrible Federal Broadband Data, States Are Taking Matters Into Their Own Hands | TechDirt
Academic Freedom & Campus Speech
- Two groups caution University of Nebraska- Lincoln against broad bias, hate-speech restrictions | Omaha World-Herald
- UT disbands bias reporting team as part of free speech settlement | Austin American-Statesmen
- Opinion: Colleges must protect against vandals of free speech | The Enquirer (Cincinnati.com)
Social Media
- Bruce Schneier: The Peril of Persuasion in the Big Tech Age | Foreign Policy
- Federal judge dismisses lawsuit against Trump executive order on ‘online censorship’ by social media | Jurist
- Where Do We Go From Here With Section 230? | Slate
- The Telecommunications Act’s “Good Samaritan” Protection: Section 230 | Disruptive Competition Project
- Now is not the time to repeal Section 230, but it should be soon | Fortune
- Platform Speech Governance and the First Amendment: A User-Centered Approach | Lawfare
- Google committed “antitrust evils,” colluded with Facebook, new lawsuit says | Ars Technica
- Twitter repeals retweet roadblocks, Facebook follows suit | Ars Technica
- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Social media companies should increase censorship to combat misinformation | Fox News
- Social media companies are already losing the vaccine misinformation fight | Vox
Journalism, Media, & Disinformation
- Trump Appointee Seeks Lasting Control Over Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia | NPR
- Sinister sounds: podcasts are becoming the new medium of misinformation | The Guardian
- Conspiracy theories run wild on Amazon | Politico
- In a Widening News Desert on the Border, a Tabloid Start-Up Defies the Odds | New York Times
- The Tow Center COVID-19 Newsroom Cutback Tracker | Columbia Journalism Review
- Not Real News: An Associated Press Roundup of Untrue Stories Shared Widely on Social Media This Week | InfoDocket/Library Journal
- The Sin Spinners | Columbia Journalism Review
- You’ve Got Mail: Is Substack the Media Future We Want? | The New Yorker
International News
- UK Online Safety Bill, coming next year, will propose fines of up to 10% of annual turnover for breaching duty of care rules | TechCrunch
- In Afghanistan, the freedoms of the press are under attack | Columbia Journalism Review
- Cuban artists protest censorship, repression | News@TheU (Miami)
- Home Ministry bans two books, including ‘Gay is OK!’ | New Straits Times
- China tightens censorship of foreign films | The Hill
- China Tightens Censorship After ‘Monster Hunter’ Scandal, Delays Release of Hit Anime ‘Demon Slayer’ | The Hollywood Reporter
- Former Zoom employee accused of censoring Tiananmen Square video meetings for Chinese government | CNN Business
- Suing to Silence: Lawsuits Used to Censor Bosnian Journalists | Balkan Insight
- No ‘negative’ news: How China censored the coronavirus | The Japan Times
- Taiwan to Regulate China’s State-Affiliated Publications After Children’s Book Controversy | The New Lens
- Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Censorship Has Japanese Players Furious | Screen Rant
Around the Web
- Meet the Southern librarians fighting for racial justice and truth-telling | Scalawag Magazine
- Tech legislation to watch in 2021 | Protocol
- The story of Browser, the library cat, comes to a close | Brainerd Dispatch
- Opinion: The fine line between censorship and moderation | San Francisco Chronicle
- A Black student’s mother complained about ‘Fences.’ He was expelled | The Baltimore Sun
- From 7 dirty words to wardrobe malfunctions: A history of censorship in America | St. Louis Post-Dispatch
- Is It Time To Let Go of the ‘Little House on the Prairie’? | Rewire
- ‘Yelp’-like reviews for social justice? ASU civil rights center seeks ways to target systemic inequality | Cronkite News (AZ PBS)
- Happy Birthday David Sedaris! | Intellectual Freedom Blog
- Happy Birthday, Sandra Cisneros | Intellectual Freedom Blog
- Naomi Wolf, Outrage, and the Terrors of LGBTQ+ Censorship | Advocate
- Julie Burchill book contract terminated by Hachette after Islamophobia accusation | Independent
- Listening to One Another in Our Nation of Stories | School Library Journal
- Opinion: Even Homer Gets Mobbed – A Massachusetts school has banned ‘The Odyssey.’ | The Wall Street Journal
- Chris Schillig: Celebrate diversity through ‘disruption’ | The Alliance Review
- “Mrs. Gurdon does a great disservice not only to Lawrence High School, but to the public discourse around K-12 education.” | Wall Street Jounal (Letter to the Editor from Cynthia Paris, Superintendent, Lawrence Public Schools)
- John le Carré, who lifted the spy novel to literature, dies at 89 | The Washington Post
- Publishing saw upheaval in 2020, but ‘books are resilient’ | AP News
- Abdul-Hakim Shabazz column: Social media, censorship and free speech | The Herald Bulletin (IN)
- Free Speech. Really? | Moyers on Democracy
- Their Stories Helped Lift a 26-Year Ban on Pell Grants for Prisoners | The Chronicle of Higher Education
ALA News
- Jill Biden to bring ALA Midwinter Virtual to a close
- AASL commends seventeen programs, events, and products across the country
- Candidates announced for 2021 Public Library Association board election
- ALA welcomes eighth consecutive budget increase for IMLS in FY21 federal appropriations
- ALA welcomes Build America’s Libraries Act to repair and modernize library facilities
- YALSA seeks member manager for Teen Programming HQ database
- Beta RDA Toolkit becomes official platform for global cataloging with new books and live webinar series to follow
- 12 rural public libraries selected to receive funding to offer bilingual exhibitions and STEAM programming
- ALA’s $20,000 Donation Helps Calcasieu Parish Public Libraries Re-open to Communities in Need
- Booklist’s 2020 Top of the List and Editors’ Choice announced
ALA Publishing
- Ideas for pivoting during the pandemic
- Maker literacies for academic libraries
- ACRL publishes “Faculty-Librarian Collaborations: Integrating the Information Literacy Framework into Disciplinary Courses”
Awards and Grants
- Nominations sought for 2021 Bogle Pratt International Travel Fund
- Nominations open for 2020 EMIERT Distinguished Librarian Award
- Nominations open for John Ames Humphry/OCLC/Forest Press Award
- Nominations open for 2021 ALA Presidential Citation for Innovative International Library Projects
- Call for proposals for 2021 IRRT Mission Enhancement Grant
- 2021 Professional development scholarship available through LRT
- SustainRT seeks nominations for Citation for Wellness in the Workplace
eCourses and Webinars
- New Core Web Course Explores Fundamentals of Digital Library Projects
- Marketing Your Library
- Free Webinar from Core on Building Virtual Team Cohesion at your Institution on January 13, 2021
- Learn How to Surpass Library Broadband Challenges in this Core Webinar on February 2, 2021
Subscribe to future issues of Intellectual Freedom News, a free weekly compilation of news delivered to your inbox by the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom, including
- current book challenges in libraries and schools
- articles about privacy, internet filtering and censorship
- ALA activities, conferences and institutes, products, online learning opportunities, awards and grants, international exchanges, and more
- how to get involved and make the most of what ALA offers