Intellectual Freedom News 10/25/19
Highlights
Censorship
- Supporters, opponents of Loudoun County Public Schools’ diverse libraries come out in force | Loudoun Times-Mirror
- Why and how censorship thrives in American prisons | Book Riot
- School board wants to weigh in on literature list | Ramona Sentinel (CA)
- Lebanon libraries decline to block online content | Valley News (NH)
- A censorious vigilante is hiding books about President Trump at the Coeur d’Alene library | Boise Weekly
- CS’A’s book bandit strikes again | Bonner County Daily Bee (ID); “At least one individual is intentionally hiding books within the library — specifically, books promoting LGBTQ rights, women’s right to vote and new releases critical of President Donald Trump, among other topics.”
- Howard Law School cites book censorship in U.S. prisons | Afro Black Media Authority
Privacy and Cybersecurity
- Under digital surveillance: how American schools spy on millions of kids | The Guardian
- Education before regulation: Empowering students to question their privacy | Educause Review
- NYC continues drive to help the public adopt better data privacy practices | Smart Cities World
- Why cord cutting is a privacy minefield | Fast Company
- Right to be forgotten highlights tensions between privacy, freedoms | Global Journalist
- ‘None of Your Damn Business’ review: A right to be let alone | Wall Street Journal
- Facial recognition software was able to identify patients from MRI scans | Wall Street Journal
- Facebook must face $35B facial-recognition lawsuit following court ruling | Ars Technica
Additional privacy posts, news, and updates are available at the Choose Privacy Everyday blog.
Access
- #eBooksForAll update | American Libraries
- A conference on Open Education invited for-profit publishers to a keynote. And then the objections began. | Chronicle of Higher Education
- Accessibility, the future, and why Domino’s matters | Ars Technica
- Indiana County tries to keep up, but lack of internet access stymies schools, businesses | News Interactive
- Nine-Year-Old Vihaan Khera From Delhi Built An App For Kids To Easily Exchange Books | India Times
- In the age of Google, these 3 California desert libraries are bucking digital dominance | Desert Sun (CA)
- Library may ban patrons returning books with bedbugs | Boston News 78 (MA)
Net Neutrality & Broadband Access
- Thirty-one percent of households lack a broadband connection | NPD
- FCC chairman Ajit Pai argues a patchwork of regs is bad for business | CNet
- Investing in digital equality: The case for broadband expansion | Government Technology
Copyright
- Controversial copyright bill inches closer to becoming law as House approves | Ars Technica
- France accuses Google of ignoring copyright law | Los Angeles Times
- Wading the muddy waters: Educating on copyright and digital archives | American Libraries
Academic Freedom & Campus Speech
- Speaking up about free speech on campus | Chronicle of Higher Education
- The costs of Facebook’s free speech | Axios
- An ominous new rationale for trampling on academic freedom | National Review
Fake News, Free Press, Social Media
- As Local News Outlets Shutter, Rural America Suffers Most | Pew Stateline
- How propaganda works in the digital age | Vox
- Defiant Zuckerberg says Facebook won’t police free speech | New York Times
- Tracking journalist stoppages at the US border | Columbia Journalism Review
- Trump threatens to sue CNN over highly biased news | The Wrap
- 7 Signs that your school newspaper risks censorship | Education Week
First Amendment & Free Speech
- Illinois State Supreme Court upholds state revenge porn law | Constitutional Law Prof Blog
- Free speech vs. hate speech: How societies balance competing rights | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
- Why a lawmaker floated a bill to penalize use of a profane word (that rhymes with witch) | Washington Post
- Can a black high school guard be fired for quoting the n-word? | The Hill
- Does the University of Illinois’s Title IX policy violate freedom of the press? | Freedom Forum Institute
- It’s time Americans stepped up and learned about the First Amendment | Freedom Forum Institute
Around the Web
- Happy Birthday, Ellen Wittlinger! | OIF Blog
- Americans and digital knowledge | Pew Research Center
- Library popularity index | Slate; “If the Democratic primary were decided by book copies and holds at American libraries, two unlikely candidates would be front-runners.”
- Swedish Academy defends Peter Handke’s controversial Nobel win | The Guardian
- ‘No Safe Spaces’ star Adam Carolla says censorship ‘hurting everyone,’ not a partisan issue | Fox News
International Issues
- ‘I’m not going to reconsider’: Toronto’s top librarian refuses to bar speaker critical of transgender rights | CBC
- Uzbek Poet Gets Suspended Prison Term For Importing ‘Banned’ Books | Big News Network
- Let the free market fight Chinese censorship | American Conservative
- How Chinese censorship became a global export | New Statesman America
- Gamers are scrutinizing League of Legends for signs of China’s censorship | Quartz
- Australia’s newspapers go dark to protest censorship | DW
- BBC launches mirror site to thwart media censorship | NPR
- Russia’s domestic internet is threat to the global internet | Slate
ALA News
- ALA denounces Amazon, Macmillan in response to Congressional inquiry on competition in digital markets; “Current practices by content publishers and distributors in digital markets limit libraries’ ability to deliver core services, according to a new report publicly released today by the American Library Association (ALA).”
- New ALA Report Cites Abusive Pricing, Denial and Delay of Sales to Libraries by Major Publishers | American Libraries
- Chicago teachers strike spotlights school librarians | School Library Journal
- Author Julia Alvarez is the Arthur Curley Memorial Lecture Speaker at the 2020 ALA Midwinter Meeting & Exhibits in Philadelphia
- Nominations open for 2020 IFRT John Phillip Immroth Memorial Award
- IFRT accepting nominations for 2020 Eli M. Oboler Memorial Award
- New from ACRL: “Copyright Conversations: Rights Literacy in a Digital World”
- New from ACRL: “Libraries Promoting Reflective Dialogue in a Time of Political Polarization”
- Rainbow Round Table seeks nominations for outstanding service to the LGBTQIA+ community
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