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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