Intellectual Freedom News 10/12/18
October 12, 2018 – Collated by OIF Staff and News Editors
Intellectual Freedom Highlights
- Education is not Pornography | OIF Blog
- Colorado Association of Libraries (CAL) urges the public to stand up for their intellectual freedom rights to fight against the baseless lawsuit of EBSCO and CLiC | Press Release
- Library Privacy Week October 15– 22 | NYC Public Libraries
Censorship
- Library’s “Drag Queen Story Time” postponed indefinitely | Star Tribune (Louisiana)
- NC high school pulls book ‘Beartown’ from honors class after parents complain | CBS 17.com
- Parent group sues Colorado Library Consortium over database it alleges gives kids access to pornography | The Denver Post
- State School Board supports restoring access to education database after parents find inappropriate content | KSL (Utah)
Privacy
- Annapolis Library computers infected with Emotet, almost 5K customers affected | Softpedia news
- N.J. schools can keep transgender kids’ secret from parents, state says | NJ.com
- Google exposed user data, feared repercussions of disclosing to public | Wall Street Journal
- Google’s privacy whiplash shows big tech’s inherent contradictions | Wired
- Most white Americans’ DNA can be identified through genealogy databases | The New York Times
- Consumer Data Privacy: Examining Lessons From the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act | Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Net Neutrality and Broadband Access
- Can the FCC really block California’s net neutrality law? | Wired
- Here’s how the FCC plans to defend its net neutrality repeal in federal court | The Washington Post
Access
- NJ program improves access to the internet for the blind and visually impaired | NJTV News
- New policy rewrites rules on donated books for inmates | The Pitt News
- Behold! The Library of Congress’s audacious plan to digitize and share the nation’s treasures | Boing Boing
Copyright
- Publishers escalate legal battle against ResearchGate | Inside Higher Ed; “The publishers accuse ResearchGate of “massive infringement of peer-reviewed, published journal articles.” They say that the networking site is illegally obtaining and distributing research papers protected by copyright law. They also suggest that the site is deliberately tricking researchers into uploading protected content.”
Free Press, Social Media, and Fake News
- Is This True? A Fake News Database | Politico
- Leaked Google research shows company grappling with censorship and free speech | The Verge
- Facebook purged over 800 accounts and pages pushing political messages for profit | The Washington Post
- Detecting fake news at its source: Machine learning system aims to determine if an information outlet is accurate or biased | MIT News
- Made and distributed in the U.S.A.: Online disinformation | The new York Times
- How social media users have discussed sexual harassment since #MeToo went viral | Pew Research Fact Tank
Academic Freedom & Campus Speech
- Free speech on college campuses is about education, not legislation | Freedom Forum Institute
- KSU adopts Freedom of Expression policy in wake of lawsuits | The Sentinel
- University of Michigan promises to discipline faculty in Israel boycott controversy | The Washington Post
First Amendment and Free Speech
- A deadly year for journalists as risk shifts to the west | The New York Times
- The whereabouts of missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi should concern us all | Freedom Forum Institute
Around the Web
- The 21st Century Library | Harvard Political Review
- It’s okay to be uncomfortable: Why we should not ban books | The Carolinian
- Returning to school after Hurricane Florence | School Library Journal
- How a free public library is becoming a beacon of hope in Baltimore | ABC News
- Democrats unveil “Internet Bill of Rights”: transparency, privacy, control, notification, Net Neutrality, competition, accountability | Boing Boing
- New record: More than 1 million books self-published in 2017 | Bowker/Proquest
- An interview with author Rivers Solomon | OIF Blog
- Review of “Libraries, Leadership, and Scholarly Communication” and “Scholarly Communication: What Everyone Needs to Know” | OIF Blog
- The fine line: Ethical and intellectual-freedom implications of charging our patrons | OIF Blog
International Issues
- From Orwell to ‘Little Mermaid,’ Kuwait steps up book banning | The New York Times
- EU internet censorship will censor the whole world’s internet | Electronic Frontier Foundation
- China flexes its political muscles in Africa with media censorship, academic controls | The Globe and Mail
- How the Ugandan media has borne the brunt of censorship for decades | News 24
- Recent Chinese dealings with faith groups reflect a pattern of government restrictions on religion | Pew Research Fact Tank
ALA News
- My Library, My Story: ALA president announces new social media initiative, six-city tour | American Libraries
- Museum and Library Services Act Introduced | American Libraries
- GLBTRT seeks nominations for 2019 awards recognizing outstanding service to the LGBTQ community | ALA News
- Nominations open for 2019 IFRT John Phillip Immroth Memorial Award | ALA Member News; “This award, presented annually, honors notable contributions to intellectual freedom and demonstrations of personal courage in defense of freedom of expression by a living individual, group or organization. The award consists of a citation and $500.”
- Volunteer to serve on ALA, Council, and joint committees for 2019 – 2021 | ALA Member News
- National writing contest launches to engage communities with literature | ALA News
- Nominations open for 2019 EMIERT Distinguished Librarian Award | ALA News
- ASGCLA’s Announces New Mentoring Program | ALA Member News
- New Technology Planning LITA Guide is Out Now | ALA Member News
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
You can also find us at Facebook, Twitter, and online. Or email us at oif@ala.org