Intellectual Freedom News 11/10/17
November 10, 2017 – Collated by OIF Staff and News Interns
Intellectual Freedom Highlights
- Teach the talk, don’t ban the book | OIF Blog; “Intellectual freedom advocates need to do our part to reject the sensationalization of censorship. It’s not enough to lament the restriction of a book on social media or grumble about schools’ decisions.”
- The Right to Write: OIF Blogging Opportunities for 2018 | Intellectual Freedom Blog; “The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) is seeking bloggers for 2018!”
Censorship
- Trustee takes on book policy | Thousand Oaks Acorn (Conejo Valley, CA)
- The opt-out policy | OIF Blog
- Tempers flare over discussion of book Conejo Valley Unified School District | VC Star
- Conejo Valley Unified School District back in censorship news: Say “no” to warning flags | National Coalition Against Censorship
- Conejo Valley teachers fight back against proposed ‘red-flagging’ policy | Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
- University chooses dialogue, not censorship, for controversial mural | Waco Tribune-Herald
- Texas education officials reject another Mexican-American studies textbook | The Texas Tribune
- Parents want sex-ed magazine pulled out of Pinelands Junior High | Asbury Park Press (NJ)
- The Pico Case – 35 years later | OIF Blog; “Thirty-five years ago, the Supreme Court of the United States heard arguments in the only case to involve censorship in school libraries: Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District v Pico (1982)”
- Internet association endorses internet censorship bill | Electronic Frontier Foundation; “A trade group representing giants of Internet business from Facebook to Microsoft has just endorsed a “compromise” version of the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), a bill that would be disastrous for free speech and online communities.”
Privacy
- ALA joins 45 privacy, civil rights, and human rights organizations to urge opposition to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s bill to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
- ALA also signed on to a letter urging Congress to close the close the “backdoor search loophole” in the USA Liberty Act.
- Minimize your library’s future data breach | OIF Blog; “It goes without saying that every library should do everything they can to safeguard each user’s privacy. But in the event that a breach or data theft occurs, it will be better if the information that is there isn’t more comprehensive than is absolutely necessary.”
- Congress Can’t Compromise on Privacy | US News and World Report
- Texas gunman’s iPhone could reignite FBI-Apple feud over encryption | The Washington Post
- YouTube’s new profiles for children have privacy experts very concerned | MarketWatch
- The iOS 11 privacy and security settings you should check right now | Wired
- Founder of web browser Opera says worried about online privacy | The New York Times
- See this week’s additional privacy news and updates on the Choose Privacy Week blog.
Access
- Cost of student access to research rises for UT universities | The Daily Texan
- Court demands that search engines and internet service provides block Sci-Hub | Science Magazine
- Access vs. accessibility in scholarship and science | The Scholarly Kitchen Blog
- Library seeks to reach more students with digital library card | The News Courier (AL)
- You can now stream 30000 movies with a Philly library card | Philly Voice
- How a tiny error shut off the internet for parts of the US | Wired
Free Press, Social Media, and Fake News
- Russians posing as black activists on Facebook is more than fake news | Wired
- Twitter in a tempest | OIF Blog
- In the age of fake news, a historian of the hoax | The New York Times
- ‘This wasn’t The New York Times, but for me it was a dream job’ | Columbia Journalism Review
- We’re a big part of the fix for ‘junk news’ | Newseum Institute; “The term “fake news” no longer has any real meaning as a national concern or a problem to be dealt with. The term has become far too politicized and much too imprecise, now serving as a catch-all for information anyone sees as divisive, disagreeable, biased or plain wrong.”
Net Neutrality and Broadband Access
- FCC delays, denials foil rural schools’ broadband plans | Education Week
- How Verizon and Comcast are working to ensure states don’t pass their own net neutrality bills | The Washington Post
- Academic leaders make case for net neutrality | EdSurge
Academic Freedom/ Campus Speech
- The new campus censors | The Chronicle of Higher Education
- What’s fueling the free-speech wars? | The Chronicle of Higher Education
- The wrong kind of famous | The Chronicle of Higher Education
- Life imitates art: By cancelling play in response to controversy, Brandeis compromises freedom of academic discussion | National Coalition Against Censorship
First Amendment Issues
- Where to Draw Line on Free Speech? Wedding Cake Case Vexes Lawyers | New York Times
- Progressive group sues three Republican lawmakers for blocking it on Twitter | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
- US judge says “global de-indexing order” against Google threatens free speech | Ars Technica
- Ninth Circuit requires disclosure of identifying information on website rejecting first amendment claim | Constitutional Law Prof Blog
Around the Web
- Prosecutors drop criminal case against activist arrested after laughing at Sessions | The Washington Post
- We must not let big tech threaten our security, freedoms and democracy (Guest editorial by Sen. Al Franken) | The Guardian
- An essential novel about poverty, bigotry, and sexual abuse, twenty-five years later | The New Yorker (‘Bastard out of Carolina’)
- The woman battling hate speech, censorship, and extremism online (and off) | MIT Technology Review
- Strengthening the role of school librarian: PW talks with Steven Yates | Publisher’s Weekly
- Mass shootings, climate, discrimination: Why government fear of data threatens us all | Wired
- ‘We’re told to be grateful we even have readers’: Pirated ebooks threaten the future of book series | The Guardian
- Newseum and AAUW partner on media literacy education initiatives | Newseum Institute
International Issues
- IPA protests ‘ham-fisted censorship’ of Zuma book | The Bookseller (South Africa)
- A prestigious research publisher gives in to China’s censorship | The Washington Post
- Google wins ruling to block global censorship order from Canadian Court | Fortune
- Italian street artist charged with blasphemy for Jesus poster | Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
- Libya Comic Con shut down by militia; organizers detained | Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
ALA News
- ALA to launch Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation Great Stories Club with $1.1 million grant from W.K. Kellogg Foundation
- Promoting Healthy Communities: A Health Information Initiative | Public Library Association (PLA) and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NNLM)
- ALA unveils shortlist for 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction
- Webinar – Privacy to Pornography: What Staff Need to Know about Intellectual Freedom (Free for FTRF and IFRT members)
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