Intellectual Freedom News 8/9/2019
August 9, 2019 – Collated by OIF Staff and News Editors
Highlights
- Make a powerful statement about censorship. Purchases of Banned Books Week materials supports the office’s work in defending and promoting the freedom to read.
- Freedom to Read Foundation announces five recipients of 2019 Banned Books Week event grants
Censorship
- Shoreline prudes cover up nippleless mannequin at the library | The Stranger (WA)
- Advocates say Florida city trying to close book on drag queens reading to kids | WTSP
- Drag Queen story hour to move from Port Richey bookstore after heated protests | WFLA (FL)
- Northwest Iowa man ordered to pay fine for burning LGBTQ library books | Iowa Public Radio ($65)
- My grandmother integrated a library in 1970. Now Iowans can’t let hate separate one. | Des Moines Register
- A Depression-era mural, caught in a very contemporary controversy | City Lab (CA)
- Protest seeks to stop US libraries supporting Drag Queen Story Hour | The Guardian
- Westwood police chief runs for school board amid book kerfuffle | Pascack Press (NJ)
Privacy
- As summer camps turn on facial recognition, parents get increasingly omniscient view of their kids | The Washington Post
- Computer science curriculums must emphasize privacy over capability | Forbes
- Facial recognition is suddenly everywhere. Should you worry? | Wired
- eLearning platforms for libraries | OIF Blog
- Instagram’s lax privacy practices let a trusted partner track millions of users’ physical locations, secretly save their stories, and flout its rules | Business Insider
- Concerns about online data privacy span generations | Internet Innovation Alliance
- Panel overturns settlement approval in Google privacy suit | The New York Times
- Police can get your Ring doorbell footage without a warrant, report says | Ars Technica
- Lawmakers jump-start talks on privacy bill | The Hill
Additional privacy news updates are available at the Choose Privacy Everyday blog.
Access
- New tariffs on books loom | Publishers Weekly
- Libraries are fighting to preserve your right to borrow e-books (Op/Ed)| CNN
- Public Library launches homebound library program | Bismarck Tribune (ND)
- VIVA and Wiley drive open access with progressive new agreement | Yahoo! Finance; “John Wiley and Sons Inc. (JW-A)(JW-B) and The Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA), Virginia’s academic library consortium, announced today the signing of a comprehensive agreement which combines open access publishing funds with their journal subscriptions; the first of its kind in North America.”
Net Neutrality & Broadband Access
- Elizabeth Warren unveils a plan to expand broadband access | Wired
- Wisconsin has a goal of broadband for all by 2025 | Wisconsin Public Radio
- Inside North Carolina’s push to close rural broadband gaps | Government Technology
Academic Freedom & Campus Speech
Fake News, Free Press, Social Media
- Finding the truth in today’s politics: An interview with Angie Drobnic Holan, Editor of PolitiFact | OIF Blog
- Satire or deceit? Christian humor site feuds with Snopes | The New York Times
- A reporter says the White House suspended his credentials in an ‘attempt to stifle the free press’ | The Washington Post
First Amendment & Free Speech
- ‘How can I find out?’ Fielding teens’ reference questions | OIF Blog
- The FBI and student surveillance: A Sputnik for our time | OIF Blog
- The El Paso shooting revived the free speech debate. Europe has limits | The New York Times
- Legal shield for websites rattles under onslaught of hate speech | The New York Times (Section 230, Communications Decency Act)
- Debate over policing free speech intensifies as 8chan struggles to stay online | NPR
- Why free speech makes it difficult to prosecute white supremacy | The Washington Post
Around the Web
- Why I chose not to genrify the fiction section | Teen Services Underground
- LSU locker room gift spurs GoFundMe for library | Library Journal
- Computer science could learn a lot from library and information science | Forbes
- ‘Beloved’ author Toni Morrison has died at 88 | Vulture
International Issues
- Turkey burns 300,000 books from schools and public libraries | ZME Science
- Aichi Triennale censors its exhibition about censorship following public pressure | The Art Insider (Japan)
- How China tries to take its totalitarian social control tactics global | The Federalist
ALA News
- Public Library Association condemns MacMillan Publishers library lending model
- Freedom to Read announces Fall 2019 course scholarship recipients
- LLAMA webinar helps library leaders guide their staff through changing roles
- Volunteer to Serve on ALA, Council, and Joint Committees for 2020-2022
- Accepting Applications for 2020 Class of ALA Emerging Leaders
- Nominate a superstar librarian for the I Love My Librarian award
- 2020 ALA Annual Conference Program Proposals are Now Open
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- articles about privacy, internet filtering and censorship
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