Intellectual Freedom News 5/11/2018
May 11, 2018 – Collated by OIF Staff and News Editors
Intellectual Freedom Highlights
- First they come for the poets | OIF Blog; “The recent incident in Aurora, Ill., in which a self-described satirical poem by poet George Miller was removed from the library, is troubling for many reasons.”
- A literary subscription box that fights censorship | OIF Blog
Censorship
- Parents are divided over a book in a popular student reading program in Oregon | The New York Times; ‘George’
- Cascade schools wrestle with book controversy | Statesman Journal (OR)
- Monona Grove School Board votes to retain ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ in curriculum | Wisconsin State Journal
- U.S. prison officials rescind policy restricting books behind bars | Reuters
- Westbrook bookstore dumps books by author accused of sexual harassment | Portland Press Herald
- Letter to the editor: Book ban based on morality of authors puts store on slippery slope | Portland Press Herald (OR)
- Spotify Removes R. Kelly Music From Its Playlists As Part of New Hate Content & Hateful Conduct Policy | Billboard
- NCAC urges University of Southern Maine to restore paintings removed from exhibit | NCAC
- Librarians beware: Self-censorship | OIF Blog; “In selecting books, it’s not the popular opinion that librarians should seek. It is a myriad of opinions represented by books that reflect the social and intellectual diversity of the world. “
Privacy
- The NSA Managed to Collect 500 Million US Call Records in 2017 Despite Targeting Just 40 People | Gizmodo
- Stop Saying ‘Privacy,’ Start Saying ‘Data Protection’ | The Outline
- Scholars Have Data on Millions of Facebook Users. Who’s Guarding It? | The New York Times
- Facial recognition tech is creepy when it works – and creepier when it doesn’t | Wired
- The price of Google’s new conveniences? Your data | Wired
- Equifax breach exposed millions of driver’s licenses, phone numbers, emails | Ars Technica
- How a suspected gang member’s traffic stop led to a crucial privacy case | Ars Technica
- A short guide on how not to be tracked online by Google, Amazon, & Facebook | OIF Blog
See this week’s additional privacy news and updates on the Choose Privacy Week blog.
Net Neutrality and Broadband Access
- Red alert for net neutrality | District Dispatch; “On May 9, Senate Democrats will take the first legislative action in support of net neutrality, officially filing the petition to force a vote on the Senate floor to attempt to preserve strong net neutrality protections passed in 2015. The Senate bill is a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution from Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), which would block the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) December repeal of net neutrality rules.”
- U.S. ‘net neutrality’ rules will expire on June 11: FCC | Reuters
- Senate Democrats force vote to reinstate net neutrality | CNN
- World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee defends net neutrality: ‘I invented an open, permissionless space’ | Newsweek
- Your favorite websites are rallying in a last-ditch effort to save net neutrality | Wired
- Ajit Pai gives a nice nothingburger to those in Congress demanding answer on net neutrality | TechCrunch
- The Wired guide to net neutrality | Wired
- AT&T will ask Supreme Court to cripple the FTC’s authority over broadband | Ars Technica
Access
- Newberry Library digitizes trove of Lakota drawings | Smithsonian
- Americans connect with government at the library – so fix the Federal Depository Library Program | The Hill
Filters
- Leander ISD bolsters filtering out bad stuff on district devices | Cedar Park Patch (TX)
- Britain’s great firewall blocks access to official Disney sites, internet safety guides, VPNs, and coding sites for kids | Boing Boing
Free Press, Social Media, and Fake News
- The rise of the American news desert | Vox
- Watchdog wants more transparency around censorship by tech giants | Fast Company
- Denver Post staffers protest ‘censorship’ of editor who criticized owner | CNN Media
- The UN celebrates press freedom with censorship | The New York Post; “The UN Alliance of Civilizations “postponed” a panel discussion because one participant, the News Literacy Project, refused to alter a video presentation that singled out specific countries’ abuses — flagging “severe restrictions” on press freedom in Turkey, Egypt and Mexico.”
- Indiana students launch coalition to counter “rampant” press censorship at Christian universities | Student Press Law Center
- Students’ survey highlights censorship of Christian college newspapers | Religion News Service
- ‘Transparency’ is the mother of fake news | The New York Times
Academic Freedom and Campus Speech
- Academic freedom, intellectual diversity, and the Charles Koch Foundation | Forbes
- What Charles Koch and other donors to George Mason University got for their money | The New York Times
- Why does academic freedom scare UNC-CH’s leaders? | News & Observer (Opinion piece by professor at the center of the story)
First Amendment and Free Speech
- When 2 + 2 might equal 5 | The New York Times
- GoDaddy has shut down Richard Spencer’s white supremacist site | Ars Technica
- Is cyberbullying of students like bomb threats or protected speech? A court weighs the issue | The Washington Post
Around the Web
- Libraries and Good Governance: A Briefing | International Federation of Libraries
- Then the censors came for rap music | The Atlantic
- Why ‘Fahrenheit 451’ is the book for our social media age | The New York Times
- Junot Díaz Steps Down as Pulitzer Chairman Amid Review of Misconduct Allegations | New York Times
- Inside the ecosystem that fuels Amazon’s fake review problem | BuzzFeed News
- American Libraries are having a #MeToo moment | Quartz
- Marrakesh Treaty implementation bill (S.2559) passes Senate Judiciary Committee 20-0, next to full Senate | Infodocket
International Issues
- China’s Weibo site backtracks on gay censorship after outcry | WPXI.com
- Is the writing on the wall for Hong Kong’s independent bookstores? | Radio Free Asia
- Equatorial Guinea won’t let Ramon Esono Ebale leave | CBLDF
- Eurovision pulls plug on China after censorship of LGBT ad | CNN
- Russia’s ‘Gay Propaganda’ Censor attacks health website | Human Rights Watch
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