You’ll get the sense that this week’s Thursday Threads is stacked towards cultural awareness. First is the view of a developer of the female gender in a room of peers at a meeting of the Digital Public Library of America. The second thread is a pointer to a story about Facebook’s software release process, and it leads into a story about the role of alcohol in technology conferences and reflections from the library technology community.

DLTJ Thursday Threads is a weekly summary of technology, library, and publishing topics (and anything else that crosses my path that is worth calling out). Feel free to send this to others you think might be interested in the topics. If you find these threads interesting and useful, you might want to add the Thursday Threads RSS Feed to your feed reader or subscribe to e-mail delivery using the form to the right. New this year is that Pinboard has replaced FriendFeed as my primary aggregation service. If you would like a more raw and immediate version of these types of stories, watch my Pinboard bookmarks (or subscribe to its feed in your feed reader). Items posted to are also sent out as tweets; you can follow me on Twitter. Comments and tips, as always, are welcome.

An Inclusive Table

But here I am, with a constant background obsession, now, of how to get more librarians involved (and involved more deeply) in tech, how to foster collaboration on library technology projects, which is inseparable from the problem of how to get more women involved more deeply and collaboratively in technology. So I can’t not look at that room and see how the status lines fracture, along code mastery but coincidentally also gender, written in the physical geography of the room, where I’m the only one sitting at the table. I can’t not wonder, how can I create spaces which redraw those lines.

- my first hackathon; or, gender, status, code, and sitting at the table, by Andromeda Yelton

Andromeda attended the DPLA hackathon last Thursday and posted this very pointed view of the perceptions of women in library technology.

A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Facebook Release Engineering

I recently had a unique opportunity to visit Facebook headquarters and see that story in action. Facebook gave me an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the process it uses to deploy new functionality. I watched first-hand as the company’s release engineers rolled out the new “timeline” feature for brand pages.

That was where I met Chuck Rossi, the release engineering team’s leader. Rossi, whose workstation is conveniently located within arm’s reach of the hotfix bar’s plentiful supply of booze, is a software industry veteran who previously worked at Google and IBM. I spent a fascinating afternoon with Rossi and his team learning how they roll out Facebook updates—and why it’s important that they do so on a daily basis.

- Exclusive: a behind-the-scenes look at Facebook release engineering, by Ryan Paul, Ars Technica

I’m pointing to this story for two reasons. First, it is a fascinating look at how one of the top internet operations manages its processes for rolling out new software. Second, how the wheels of the release process are greased feeds into the third story below.

Our Culture of Exclusion

Lately there have been a lot of great articles being written and discussion happening around sexism in the tech industry. And the flames are being fanned by
several high profile incidents of people saying and doing just plain stupid things.

It reminded me of this draft post just sitting here, uncommitted. For quite a while I’ve been collecting links, tweets and other stuff to illustrate another problem that’s been affecting me (and other people, surely). I thought it was finally time to write the post and bring this up because, honestly, I feel excluded too.

- Our Culture of Exclusion, Ryan Funduk’s blog

The role of alcohol in technology events was a topic of discussion on Twitter and elsewhere at the end of last week. There is a term for this that I heard for the first time last week — brogrammer — and I don’t think it is a flattering persona for the technology profession. The way in which Facebook releases its code, described in the thread above, is one data point. Ryan’s message, quoted above, points to some high-profile conferences where alcohol seems to play a central part of the event. His article was the source of some introspection among the Code4Lib community as well.

Code4Lib Discussion of "Culture of Exclusion"

Storified by Peter Murray · Wed, Apr 11 2012 23:09:38

@yo_bj @mjgiarlo @anarchivist @lljohnston @sshreeves @jmarkockerbloom barrel aged munster? Dan

Talk of #code4lib and social reminds me I’m hoping to play some board games for #code4lib13. Lot easier to bring when driving Jon Gorman

@mjgiarlo that being said, I’m a huge fan of the craft beer parts. Tim Donohue

@mjgiarlo coolio I didn’t realize that.Tim Donohue

Thursday Threads has been a back-burner activity for quite a while now. Blame it on too many interesting things happening at home and at work (to say nothing of the early arrival of spring weather). This week will be only a slight exception with just two threads of mention rather than the typical three or four. First is the announcement by Blackboard that it is starting up an open source support division and acquiring/hiring some of the bigger names in that sector. Second is a reflection on two independent stories about the effect of copyright uncertainty and digital rights management on book materials.

Feel free to send this to others you think might be interested in the topics. If you find these threads interesting and useful, you might want to add the Thursday Threads RSS Feed to your feed reader or subscribe to e-mail delivery using the form to the right. New this year is that Pinboard has replaced FriendFeed as my primary aggregation service. If you would like a more raw and immediate version of these types of stories, watch my Pinboard bookmarks (or subscribe to its feed in your feed reader). Items posted to are also sent out as tweets; you can follow me on Twitter. Comments and tips, as always, are welcome.

Blackboard Pivots Towards Open Source

Today we are making some big announcements that we know will catch the attention of many members of the education community. Taken together, they speak to a broader shift in our strategy for serving education institutions so we are taking a moment to share some thoughts about our approach.

The high level change is this: Blackboard is becoming a multiple learning platform company that supports both commercially developed software as well as open source solutions.

- An Open Letter to the Education Community, Blackboard Strategy Update

Last week Blackboard announced a four-part strategy to join the open source community: 1. the formation of an open source services group; 2. the acquisition of Moodlerooms and NetSpot; 3. the hiring of Sakai Foundation Board Member Charles Severance to lead Blackboard’s Sakai initiatives; and 4. the announcement of continued support for Angel (a proprietary platform and company that Blackboard acquired in 2009). Phil Hill has a wrap-up of public statements from Blackboard and commercial competitors to Blackboard.

You might remember Blackboard from its now infamous patent lawsuit with competitor Desire2Learn in which Blackboard tried to claim invention rights to the fundamentals of any computer-mediated learning management system. Blackboard initially won the lawsuit but the finding was overturned at the appellate level. That was all after Blackboard issued a “non-assertion pledge” following discussions with both EDUCAUSE and the Sakai Foundation. (Interestingly, the original pledge is no longer available from the Blackboard website; it is available through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.) Blackboard has an extensive history of buying companies and integrating them with its core software, so one has to wonder what this move towards open source means for not only Sakai and Moodle, but for the core Blackboard product as well. Audrey Watters sums up some of the concerns from the open source community while “Dr. Chuck” reflects on the state of institutional support for open source software versus what commercial companies are putting into the effort. Laura Gekeler pulls no punches in contemplating what that means.

Copyright and DRM

There’s been quite a bit of chatter lately about some research by Professor Paul Heald from the University of Illinois. Heald recently delivered a seminar on the stagnating effects of extended copyright terms in the U.S., and blogger Eric Crampton immediately called attention to one data-set about books that is particularly telling (found through Slate) which illustrates what The Atlantic has dubbed “The Missing 20th Century”. It’s the number of titles available from Amazon as new editions (as opposed to used copies) graphed by the decade of original publication:

The source of that massive fall-off at the midpoint is seemingly simple: all books published in the U.S. in 1922 or earlier are in the public domain. What’s immediately apparent from this graph is the fact that copyright is limiting the public’s access to older works—but why and how, exactly? The answer lies in the reality of what a copyright is really worth, commercially, and how long it retains that value—and it sheds light on another problem with copyright law.

- Why The ‘Missing 20th Century’ Of Books Is Even Worse Than It Seems, by Leigh Beadon, Techdirt

DRM is just “a speedbump,” Hachette’s Maja Thomas said at a copyright conference this afternoon. However, opinion within Hachette is clearly divided.

- Will Hachette Be The First Big-6 Publisher To Drop DRM On E-Books?, y Laura Hazard Owen, PaidContent.org

I do wonder what will be left in archives decades from now. It does seem like some forms of creative media are under assault from this double-barrel shotgun: uncertainty of public domain status for content from the 1920s to the 1980s and, arguably when we get our recordkeeping act together on ownership from the 1990s forward, the content will be locked up in digital rights management encoded formats.

I’ve been away from DLTJ Thursday Threads for a while, but that doesn’t mean the fun hasn’t stopped. This week there are stories about the beginning and the end of the Research Works Act (again, one might add), Amazon’s continuing shifts in the ebook marketplace, and an announcement of beta access to OCLC’s Website for Small Libraries service.

Feel free to send this to others you think might be interested in the topics. If you find these threads interesting and useful, you might want to add the Thursday Threads RSS Feed to your feed reader or subscribe to e-mail delivery using the form to the right. New this year is that Pinboard has replaced FriendFeed as my primary aggregation service. If you would like a more raw and immediate version of these types of stories, watch my Pinboard bookmarks (or subscribe to its feed in your feed reader). Items posted to are also sent out as tweets; you can follow me on Twitter. Comments and tips, as always, are welcome.

Research Works Act is Dead

The introduction of HR 3699 [the Research Works Act] has spurred a robust, expansive debate on the topics of scientific and scholarly publishing, intellectual property protection, and public access to federally funded research. Since its introduction, we have heard from numerous stakeholders and interested parties on both sides of this important issue.

As the costs of publishing continue to be driven down by new technology, we will continue to see a growth in open access publishers. This new and innovative model appears to be the wave of the future. The transition must be collaborative, and must respect copyright law and the principles of open access. The American people deserve to have access to research for which they have paid. This conversation needs to continue and we have come to the conclusion that the Research Works Act has exhausted the useful role it can play in the debate. As such, we want Americans concerned about access to research and other participants in this debate to know we will not be taking legislative action on HR 3699, the Research Works Act. We do intend to remain involved in efforts to examine and study the protection of intellectual property rights and open access to publicly funded research.

- Statement by Representatives Issa and Maloney (via Alexander Howard)

The Research Works Act (RWA) had the stated intention “to ensure the continued publication and integrity of peer-reviewed research works by the private sector” but many saw it an attempt to reverse the mandatory NIH 12-month to open publication mandate and prevent similar mandates in other government agencies. (Go ahead, follow the link; the legislation is remarkably short!) The efforts against RWA got into gear when it was revealed that Elsevier was a top contributor to Representative Maloney, a co-sponsor to the legislation. That sparked a boycott of Elsevier by researchers that signed a statement that they would stop submitting papers, refereeing, and performing editorial work for the publisher; it was signed by 7,666 people so far.

This week Elsevier dropped support for the Research Works Act, followed shortly by the message from the legislation’s sponsors that they would suspend work on the act. A more in-depth message was posted to the LIBLICENSE-L list by a Elsevier vice president. This is, however, not the first time such legislation has been proposed and defeated; similar bills were proposed in two previous congressional sessions.

Amazon Gives (Access to Ebooks) and Amazon Takes Away

The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library continues to grow rapidly, now offering more than 100,000 books that Amazon Prime members with Kindles can borrow for free—including over 100 New York Times Best Sellers like The Hunger Games trilogy—as frequently as a book a month, with no due dates.

- Amazon press release

Amazon.com removed more than 4,000 e-books from its site this week after it tried and failed to get them more cheaply, a muscle-flexing move that is likely to have significant repercussions for the digital book market.

- Amazon Pulls Thousands of E-Books in Dispute, by David Streitfeld, New York Times Bits Blog

Within the span of a week we see these two stories about ebooks on Kindles. In the first, Amazon announced that the size of the Kindle lending library has reached 100,000 books, including “a third of the Top 20 Kindle Best Sellers in February.” Amazon also noted that “over 1 million KDP Select books [had been] borrowed since program began in December.” The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library is not without controversy from publishers and authors, though, as Amazon extends its reach into the role of the traditional publisher.

In the second, Amazon pulled access to ebooks from the Independent Publishers Group (IPG) when the two parties could not reach an agreement on terms. IPG explains its reasoning but we have not seen a similar response from Amazon. This story has similarities to the Amazon/Macmillan rift two years ago. Amazon blinked in that plotline and restored Macmillan books to the Kindle store. It remains to be seen if something similar happens in this case.

OCLC Website for Small Libraries Project Goes Beta

The Website for Small Libraries project, which began as an OCLC Innovation Lab experiment in 2011, is now available as a beta service for any library wishing to set up its own website.

By participating in the project, libraries will be able to quickly and easily set up a website that provides basic functionality for making small collection information available on the Web, setting up users, checking materials in and out, placing holds, and providing library contact, location, service and event information.

- OCLC Website for Small Libraries project makes getting on the Web easy and fast for small libraries, OCLC Press Release

OCLC’s project to offer Website for Small Libraries reached the beta stage earlier this month after a year in development. The early stages of development were covered previously in DLTJ, and it is good to see this project survive the early stages to make it to this point.

The internet has survived the great SOPA blackout, and we’re still talking about the fallout. Apple made a major announcement of plans to support textbooks on iPads, but there are concerns about the implementation. But the first story this week is about a free service geared towards teaching people how to program with weekly lessons throughout 2012.

Feel free to send this to others you think might be interested in the topics. If you find these threads interesting and useful, you might want to add the Thursday Threads RSS Feed to your feed reader or subscribe to e-mail delivery using the form to the right. New this year is that Pinboard has replaced FriendFeed as my primary aggregation service. If you would like a more raw and immediate version of these types of stories, watch my Pinboard bookmarks (or subscribe to its feed in your feed reader). Items posted to are also sent out as tweets; you can follow me on Twitter. Comments and tips, as always, are welcome.

Code Year: Learn to Code in 2012

Sign up for Code Year to start receiving a new interactive programming lesson every Monday. You’ll be building apps and websites before you know it!

- Code Year

Code Year is a project of internet startup Codecademy, a service that teaches people how to code (JavaScript only, at the moment). There have been three classes posted already, and the website says they are still accepting registrations at the homepage. Code Year is free, and it sends an e-mail at the beginning of each week with a link to that week’s course. More questions? See the frequently asked questions.

What I think is really cool about this is that a group of librarians has self-organized themselves to support each other through the year. There is a community area on ALA Connect and a list of resources on the catcode wiki that includes examples tailored to cataloging challenges. (“catcode” is a unique story onto itself. It is a wiki created to “help support dialogue between catalogers and coders.”)

Apple Introduces iBooks Author

Educators so far seem excited about the potential promise of a learning “revolution” enabled by Apple’s new iBooks Author app. However, not everyone is feeling that same level of enthusiasm: e-book publishing experts have concerns about the formatting that iBooks Author can output, which isn’t fully ePub 2 or ePub 3 compliant. Furthermore, Apple has added a clause to iBooks Author’s end user license agreement that prohibits selling e-books created with iBooks Author anywhere but the iBookstore.

- Enthusiasm for iBooks Author marred by licensing, format issues, by Chris Foresman, Ars Technica

Last week saw the big introduction of iBooks Textbooks for iPad and iBooks Author ebook creation utility. The combination were billed as a promising new way to have students interact with course materials and to have teachers build their own content. There were some not-so-nice surprises in the implementation, though. First, the ebook format is close to that of ePub standard from the International Digital Publishing Forum, but strays in enough important ways that the iBooks Textbooks themselves won’t be usable on non-Apple devices. Second, included the End-User License Agreement for the iBooks Author software are terms that says content created with iBooks Author can be given away freely but can only be sold through Apple’s iBookstore. Apple also reserves the right to determine if your work is sold at iBookstore with no recourse for rejected works. The article above has more details, and the press coverage of iBooks Textbooks and iBooks Author has been generally negative so far.

Update on 6-Feb-2012: Apple released iBooks Author version 1.0.1 with the only change being clarifications to the End-User License Agreement: “If you want to charge a fee for a work that includes files in the .ibooks format generated using iBooks Author, you may only sell or distribute such work through Apple, and such distribution will be subject to a separate agreement with Apple… This restriction does not apply to the content of such works when distributed in a form that does not include files in the .ibooks format.”

SOPA and Protect-IP Are Dead

Graphic from Talking Points Memo

Leaders in Congress on Friday effectively killed two pieces of anti-online piracy legislation following the increasingly vocal protests of tens of thousands of websites and millions of Internet users.

That’s right, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate are, for all practical purposes, dead in the water.

Sure, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) used the word “postponed” in their announcements, saying that Congress would only take a breather, but would certainly not give up for good on its goal of passing some sort of legislation designed to combat overseas “rogue” websites hosting pirated American content.

But whenever Congress decides to re-engage the online piracy fight — and it could be a while, given just how acrimonious the debate over the bills became in the last week — it’s almost certain that SOPA and PIPA won’t be revived in any recognizable form.

- How The Web Killed SOPA and PIPA, by Carl Franzen, Talking Points Memo Idea Lab

Who would have thought — grass roots organizations convince major internet presences to “black out” or otherwise inform users of ill-considered provisions (at best) in legislation, and in turn those users bury both houses of Congress with so much anti-SOPA and -PIPA feedback that they effectively kill the bills. Is this the closest we’ve come to direct democracy since ancient Athens? Perhaps! The article quoted above goes into great detail about the formational elements of SOPA and PIPA and the forces that gathered to stop them.

The response to Wikipedia being blacked out in particular was interesting. The Washington Post, The Guardian and National Public Radio announced that they would answer questions posted to Twitter with the hashtag #altwiki. Closer to the library community Credo Reference announced that free access for a day.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www.codecademy.com/codeyear/week/1 on November 1st, 2012.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www.codecademy.com/codeyear/week/2 on November 1st, 2012.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www.codecademy.com/codeyear/week/3 on November 1st, 2012.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www.codecademy.com/codeyear/week/1#codeyear_faq on November 1st, 2012.

One could say it is an all intellectual property edition of DLTJ Thursday Threads. How could one miss the outpouring of opposition to SOPA/PROTECT-IP? If that was an overwhelming story you might have missed the introduction of the Research Works Act that could end the open access mandates now at the National Institutes of Health and coming elsewhere. And because we need some good news, Internet2 announced a new electronic textbook pilot that could be really interesting.

Feel free to send this to others you think might be interested in the topics. If you find these threads interesting and useful, you might want to add the Thursday Threads RSS Feed to your feed reader or subscribe to e-mail delivery using the form to the right. New this year is that Pinboard has replaced FriendFeed as my primary aggregation service. If you would like a more raw and immediate version of these types of stories, watch my Pinboard bookmarks (or subscribe to its feed in your feed reader). Items posted to are also sent out as tweets; you can follow me on Twitter. Comments and tips, as always, are welcome.

Support for Web Bill Wanes as Protests Spread

When the powerful world of old media mobilized to win passage of an online antipiracy bill, it marshaled the reliable giants of K Street — the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Recording Industry Association of America and, of course, the motion picture lobby, with its new chairman, former Senator Christopher J. Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat and an insider’s insider.

Yet on Wednesday this formidable old guard was forced to make way for the new as Web powerhouses backed by Internet activists rallied opposition to the legislation through Internet blackouts and cascading criticism, sending an unmistakable message to lawmakers grappling with new media issues: Don’t mess with the Internet.

- Support for Web Bill Wanes as Protests Spread, By Jonathan Weisman, New York Times

The population of the internet became very familiar with the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT-IP Act (a.k.a. PIPA) today with major internet services like Wikipedia blocking access to its articles and Google placing a black rectangle over its logo. Advocacy sites like americancensorship.org and blacklist.eff.org and www.google.com/landing/takeaction sprang up to prompt U.S. citizens to call their Senators and non-U.S. citizens to petition the U.S. State Department to set in motion opposition to bills that once seemed inevitable. And all sorts of people took to Twitter to protest the fact that they couldn’t use Wikipedia to answer their homework.

It wasn’t all a one-way street, though. Former Senator Chris Dodd (and now MPAA chairperson) denounced the protests as “an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on [the sites] for information and [who] use their services.” House Judiciary Committee Chairperson Lamar Smith announced that his committee will resume consideration of SOPA in February. And PROTECT-IP Act sponsor Senator Leahy released a point-by-point rebuttal to some of the claims made by opponents.

At the end of the day, the protest clearly had an effect on the legislation as co-sponsors dropped their support of PROTECT-IP and others made statements opposing the bill. As this is being written on the evening of the 18th, the ProPublica lists 41 Senators supporting and 19 Senators opposing or “leaning no” (OpenCongress’ whip count lists it as 34 to 35 versus last night’s OpenCongress count of 39 to 16), so it is unclear whether there the 60 votes required to end debate and move for passage of PROTECT-IP in the Senate as promised by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

I’ve stated my objections to SOPA and my objections to PROTECT-IP, and reiterated them today by putting up an anti-SOPA/PROTECT-IP splash page on DLTJ. I also still think there is more to learn a few levels deeper than the anti-SOPA/PROTECT-IP advocacy. ProPublica has a project called Who in Congress Supports SOPA and PIPA/PROTECT-IP? that offers a variety of ways to categorize supporters and opponents of the legislation including an accounting of campaign donations by industry. On my own Stop-SOPA/PROTECT-IP page, I ask readers to look into Laurence Lessig’s #Rootstrikers movement. A big part of the disconnect and dysfunctional nature of public office holders is the role that campaign contributions play — or, at best, have the appearance of influence — in the public policy decision making. So while SOPA/PROTECT-IP opponents may have won the battle, there is much to do to win the war of undue influence that created SOPA and PIPA in the first place.

More Legislative Shenanigans: Research Works Act

In case SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, hasn’t given you enough heartburn, here’s another development on the legislative horizon to be concerned about–H.R. 3699, the Research Works Act. The Association of American Publishers has provided a summary of what they hope the bill will accomplish, which is a frightening read for those of us committed to the principles of Open Access. It appears that H.R. 3699 would seriously threaten public access to federally funded research and deal a critical blow to the Open Access movement, which has been buoyed by exactly the kind of activity H.R. 3699 seeks to curtail in the AAP’s view, namely public access mandates and the development of repositories for publicly funded research.

- More Legislative Shenanigans: Research Works Act (H.R. 3699), by Meredith Kahn, University of Michigan’s MPublishing blog

Yes, that’s right — more intellectual property legislation in front of the U.S. Congress. This time it is a bill that would protect the business interests of academic publishers by preventing the U.S. government from mandating open access to federally funded research. An article in The Guardian (U.K.) paper says academic publishers have become the enemies of science. The twist here is that one of the sponsors of the Research Works Act is none other that Representative Darrell Issa, one of the leading opponents to SOPA in the House Judiciary Committee. As you might guess, campaign donations are involved and so there is a call from #Rootstrikers to help fight “SOPA v2″.

Internet2, McGraw-Hill, Courseload, and Five Universities Implement eText Pilot in Spring 2012

Participating universities in the pilot get McGraw-Hill eTexts, the Courseload reader and annotation platform integrated with their Learning Management System, and can be part of a joint research study of eText use and perceptions. Through the Courseload software, students can print, use social annotation with classmates and instructors, and access their eTexts on any HTML5-capable tablet, smartphone, or computer. Students will receive their eTexts at no cost as the institutions are subsidizing the study, and students who prefer a full hardcopy book may optionally order a print-on-demand version of the eText for a $28 fee. Faculty interest at the pilot institutions has been very strong.

- Internet2, McGraw-Hill, Courseload, and Five Universities Implement eText Pilot in Spring 2012, Internet2 Press Release

This is good news for students and etextbooks. It sounds like a good experiment and I’m eager to see the outcomes of the pilot. And something that might make next week’s DLTJ Thursday Threads? The rumor that Apple is expected to delve into textbooks in an announcement today.

The text was modified to update a link from http://dltj.org/tag/protect-ip to http://dltj.org/tag/protect-ip-act on August 22nd, 2012.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://judiciary.house.gov/news/01172012.html on November 1st, 2012.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://rootstrikers.org/mailings/help-us-fight-sopa/ on November 1st, 2012.

Welcome to the new year! Threads this week include a brief analysis of the legal problems in store if SOPA and PROTECT-IP become law, what an analysis of the problems with Best Buy might teach libraries, and why open source licensing of clinical tools is important.

Feel free to send this to others you think might be interested in the topics. If you find these threads interesting and useful, you might want to add the Thursday Threads RSS Feed to your feed reader or subscribe to e-mail delivery using the form to the right. New this year is that Pinboard has replaced FriendFeed as my primary aggregation service. If you would like a more raw and immediate version of these types of stories, watch my Pinboard bookmarks (or subscribe to its feed in your feed reader). Items posted to are also sent out as tweets; you can follow me on Twitter. Comments and tips, as always, are welcome.

A Look at the Legal Aspects of SOPA and PROTECT-IP

Two bills now pending in Congress—the PROTECT IP Act of 2011 (Protect IP) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House—represent the latest legislative attempts to address a serious global problem: large-scale online copyright and trademark infringement. Although the bills differ in certain respects, they share an underlying approach and an enforcement philosophy that pose grave constitutional problems and that could have potentially disastrous consequences for the stability and security of the Internet’s addressing system, for the principle of interconnectivity that has helped drive the Internet’s extraordinary growth, and for free expression.

- Don’t Break the Internet, by Mark Lemley, David S. Levine, and David G. Post, Stanford Law Review

In case you missed the dramatic events in the last days of 2011, SOPA and PROTECT-IP Act, just before Congress recessed for the year lawmakers concerned with the provisions of SOPA offered and debated enough amendments to the draft legislation that they effectively stalled passage through the House Judiciary Committee. At the end of the last committee meeting, the sponsors of SOPA acknowledged that there were significant issues and seemed to agree that they needed a confidential briefing from the Department of Homeland Security on the possible effects on DNSSEC — a highly technical but very important consideration. (Why it needs to be confidential when DNSSEC is an open specification stretches my imagination, but there you go…)

This paper by Lemley, Levine and Post describes the legal implications of enforcing the key provisions of SOPA and PROTECT-IP as drafted. The authors say “the bills represent an unprecedented, legally sanctioned assault on the Internet’s critical technical infrastructure” and describe how it is a bad prescient and why it won’t work in the end. In more positive news, there is an effort underway to draft legislation that would accomplish much of what SOPA and PROTECT-IP say they want to do without many of the downsides.

Why Best Buy is Going out of Business…Gradually

Electronics retailer Best Buy is headed for the exits. I can’t say when exactly, but my guess is that it’s only a matter of time, maybe a few more years.

- Why Best Buy is Going out of Business…Gradually, by Larry Downes, Forbes

The authors tell a story about how as a Best Buy customer he was approached by a salesperson wanting to sell him an on-demand video package of some sort, and that reminded me just a little bit from my academic experience of trying to push bibliographic instruction on students rather than solving the problem they had at hand. The article goes on to describe how online retailers like Amazon are more in tune with customer needs and demands. I couldn’t help but wonder if our library processes and procedures and polices are more like Best Buy or more like Amazon. From what I hear at my consortial perspective we are trending towards Amazon, but are we going to get there fast enough?

By the way, I can highly recommend a recent 51 minute audio interview with Robert Stephens, founder of the Geek Squad and now Chief Technology Officer of Best Buy (after Best Buy purchased and integrated the Geek Squad electronics service chain early last decade. It is a fascinating view of how customer service must trump all other concerns, and how efficiently executing customer service is the true path to survival. There are some lessons in there for libraries as well.

Open Source Licensing Defuses Copyright Law’s Threat to Medicine

Enforcing copyright law could potentially interfere with patient care, stifle innovation and discourage research, but using open source licensing instead can prevent the problem, according to a physician – who practices both at the University of California, San Francisco and the San Francisco VA Medical Center – and a legal scholar at the UC Hastings College of Law.

- Open Source Licensing Defuses Copyright Law’s Threat to Medicine, News service of the University of California, San Francisco

Here’s something to think about. What if new medical advances where suppressed because the diagnostic instruments used were protected by copyright. The doctor in the above article goes on to say that clinical tools tend to resemble one another “not because their creators are unoriginal, but because the tools are based on the same research and the same science.” That is a legal grey area where clinics decide to err on the side of caution and not use something that could be protected by copyright. It sort of reminds me about the unsettled law surrounding orphan works — just enough grey to stifle innovation.

Another “by the way”: I can also recommend a 16 minute recording of Karen Sandler speaking at the recent O’Reilly Media Open Source conference on the need to publish the source code of embedded medical devices under an open source license so the programs could be independently inspected. It, too, comes by way of the IT Conversations podcast. Two podcast mentions in one DLTJ Thursday Threads? What can I say…I listened to a lot of podcasts over the December break.

As the last DLTJ Thursday Threads of the year, the stories in this post look back to what we saw in 2011 and look forward to what we may see in 2012. Looking backwards is a list of five things we learned about publishing from O’Reilly Media and Google’s 3-minute Zeitgeist video. Looking forward are a list of predictions from Fast Company and from the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts in the UK. At this high point when 2011 is slowing and we start down the hill of 2012, I wish you a happy and prosperous new year.

Feel free to send this to others you think might be interested in the topics. If you find these threads interesting and useful, you might want to add the Thursday Threads RSS Feed to your feed reader or subscribe to e-mail delivery using the form to the right. If you would like a more raw and immediate version of these types of stories, watch my FriendFeed stream (or subscribe to its feed in your feed reader). Comments and tips, as always, are welcome.

Five things we learned about publishing in 2011

1. Amazon is, indeed, a disruptive publishing competitor
2. Publishers aren’t necessary to publishing
3. Readers sure do like ebooks
4. HTML5 is an important publishing technology
5. DRM is full of unintended consequences

- Five things we learned about publishing in 2011, by Jenn Webb, O’Reilly Radar

I think we can add a sixth thing: The relationship between libraries and publishers is no longer a passive one. Although libraries and publishers were always intertwined, this year we saw more stories where they came head-to-head (HarperCollins/OverDrive and Authors Guild versus HathiTrust) and side-by-side (Douglas County’s Ebook Lending). I expect we will see this trend continue in 2012.

Google’s Year in Review

Within the frame of Google’s newly launched Google+ project, this three minute video provides a perspective on the top news stories of the year.

10 Bold Tech Predictions For 2012

1. Social business will take off in 2012, but companies will struggle to adopt.
2. A significant failure in a popular cloud service will set the cloud movement back.
3. Mobile IT will grow slowly in the enterprise.
4. Organizations will increase IT infrastructure investments.
5. An iPad tablet alternative will emerge out of the fragmented Android market.
6. Android vs. iOS 2012.
7. eBooks will dominate.
8. Information overload will get much worse.
9. Consolidation in the social business/enterprise collaboration market.
10. A significant new player will emerge in the social networking space.

- 10 Bold Tech Predictions For 2012, by David Lavenda, Fast Company

A couple things for libraries to watch in this list. I don’t know if eBooks will dominate, but they will certainly become more prevalent. The first quarter 2012 sales for ebooks will be interesting because many people are expecting a bump in sales that corresponds with e-reader gifts. (Helped, no doubt, by the introduction of the new Kindle models late in the year.) Look for libraries to publish statistics of lending as well, although one wonders how much “head room” is left in the lendable collections after the last surge of e-reader sales. Given that budgets in libraries — and the cities/states/universities over them — tend to lag the business world, I’m not sure that IT spending in libraries will increase although there is some infrastructure that really needs to be updated. And personally I think libraries should punt on the whole Android versus iOS debate and design for a mobile, HTML5-based world.

12 predictions for 2012

1. Innovation for frugality: This year innovators will become thriftier
2. Raspberry Pi and the rise of the cheap computer: We’ll see a return to home programming
3. Massively connected: The Internet of Things will come of age
4. Healthy appetite for tech: Our approach to health will become more like a running club
5. The rise of the new reporter: Data journalism will defy the decline of the printed press
6. Your mobile wallet: Technology enabling our phones to act as mobile wallets will finally break through
7. Seeing the impact in impact investing: The impact investment industry will step up a gear
8. The death and life of great public servants: A growing movement of leaders will challenge the separation of public and private sectors
9. 3D printing: The next Industrial Revolution will continue to pick up steam
10. Educated gamers: Next Christmas the games will be much more serious
11. The year of the crowdfunder: 2012 will prove an important year for the evolution of business funding
12. Outside the Box: Next year we’ll see a seismic shift in how we understand, view and make television

- 12 predictions for 2012, National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (UK)

This list comes from the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts in the U.K., so I think some of the predictions are specific to that country (the mobile wallet prediction, in particular), but I believe most of these are pretty general for the U.S. as well.

This is the just-in-time-for-the-holidays edition of DLTJ Thursday Threads. The U.S. House Judiciary Committee suspended work on SOPA, and there was much relief from the technology community. The Palo Alto Public Library announced plans to lend Chromebooks (laptops with Google’s cloud-based operating system) to patrons. And OCLC announced a rebranding and expansion of its webscale activities with the WorldShare Platform.

Inclusive of all holidays of the season I wish you a safe, restful and happy celebration.

Feel free to send this to others you think might be interested in the topics. If you find these threads interesting and useful, you might want to add the Thursday Threads RSS Feed to your feed reader or subscribe to e-mail delivery using the form to the right. If you would like a more raw and immediate version of these types of stories, watch my FriendFeed stream (or subscribe to its feed in your feed reader). Comments and tips, as always, are welcome.

A Status Update on SOPA from Washington

Prospects: mixed. On the one hand, it’s looking likely that it will pass out of committee. Proposed amendments voted down 2-1 in HJC when the manager’s amendment was marked up. Unless something changes, I expect SOPA to emerge largely unamended, particularly with respect to that relates search engines and use of DNS for enforcement, the most controversial aspects of the bill for the tech community.

On the other hand, there have been significant cybersecurity concerns raised about the bills because of what it would do to DNSSEC, including by DHS officials. The committee might take a classified briefing so that the government’s own geeks from Sandia Labs and DHS and other “Three Letter Agencies” could explain to the legislators) who somehow neglected to bring in any technical experts before the committee to testify) why SOPA won’t work and why it’s a terrible idea to try to DNS for enforcement. If that happens before markup, it could change the bill that heads to the House floor — and House leadership might want to address security concerns before bringing it to a full vote.

- A Status Update on SOPA from Washington, by Alexander Howard on Google+

Remember the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)? It is the proposed bill that would force internet service providers to block DNS name-to-address translation and force revenue-generating systems (advertisement networks and payment intermediaries) to cut off service to a “foreign infringing site”. The bill was on the fast track to go through the final markup process through the Judiciary Committee last week when debate on dozens of proposed amendments ran out the clock on this year’s congressional session. That is where O’Reilly Media technology writer Alexander Howard picks up the story with his summary excerpted above. Alexander’s post is a great synopsis of the history, status, players-to-watch, and people to watch for updates. For a view on why the technology community was alternating between sobbing and anger, see the aptly titled “Dear Congress, It’s No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works.”

Silicon Valley Library Lends Google Chromebooks

In a first-of-its-kind pilot project, the Palo Alto, California Library will soon be loaning Google Chromebook computers to library patrons for as long as one week at a time.

The program highlights the Chromebook’s ability to operate as a kind of “disposable computer,” as Google puts it. With the Chromebook, most all data and applications reside on the Web — not the local machine — so it can easily be passed from person-to-person. It’s a very Googly setup, and the search giant hopes it will reinvent the way businesses use computers.

- Silicon Valley Library Lends Google Chromebooks, Wired.com Enterprise blog

Cloud computing meets equipment circulation. I remember a time when libraries used to offer VCR and DVD players to patrons for check-out. Now that service is coming to computers. Since everything on the computer is replicated to Google’s servers, it is easy to wipe the individual patron’s files on the machine when the next person logs in. One just needs a Google account to make it work, and that is — of course — one of the distinguishing factors between lending Chromebooks and lending VCR and DVD players. Will patrons mind the Google account requirement? Should libraries educate patrons on the privacy and information-harvesting/using practices of Google before lending a device?

OCLC Introduces OCLC WorldShare

The OCLC WorldShare Platform facilitates collaboration and app-sharing across the library community, so that libraries can combine library-built applications, partner-built applications and OCLC-built applications. This enables the benefits of each single solution to be shared broadly throughout the library community.

- OCLC introduces OCLC WorldShare

Reaching back a little bit, earlier this month OCLC announced the WorldShare Platform — a roll-up of the existing Webscale Management tools with the ability to insert third-party applications into a single bibliographic view. This is potentially a game-changer in how libraries work with bibliographic data. Similar in concept — although quite different in technical implementation — to next generation library automation systems like Kuali OLE and Ex Libris Alma and Evergreen, WorldShare views back-room bibliographic description, acquisition, and materials-handling workflows as a series of choreographed processes that can be mixed and matched to meet a library’s particular needs. It turns the traditional approach of information processing inside out — the data is in a superior position to the computer program. The WorldShare Platform is sort of like Facebook. Just as Facebook introduced ways for outside developers to “integrate into the core Facebook experience“, WorldShare platform enables external providers to supply applications that can use the data residing in the platform.

Unless I’m not reading the right places, the WorldShare introduction has landed with somewhat of a thud among the library technologist community. Aside from Marshall Breeding’s post on InfoToday, I haven’t seen any discussion of it. And that seems odd.

In this week’s news we still have activity on legislation before the U.S. Congress on measures to protect intellectual property on the internet. This is serious stuff with serious people trying to make this go quietly into law. Well, it may not go quietly into law, but it has enough money-enabled lobbyists behind it that the legislation might become the law of the land. Closer to the profession is the publication of costs associated with various forms of resource sharing at Ohio State University. Finally, tips for communicating well with IT staff.

Feel free to send this to others you think might be interested in the topics. If you find these threads interesting and useful, you might want to add the Thursday Threads RSS Feed to your feed reader or subscribe to e-mail delivery using the form to the right. If you would like a more raw and immediate version of these types of stories, watch my FriendFeed stream (or subscribe to its feed in your feed reader). Comments and tips, as always, are welcome.

Proposed Alternative Legislation to SOPA/PROTECT-IP

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) have released a draft of OPEN: Online Protection & Enforcement of Digital Trade Act, intended as an alternative to SOPA/PROTECT-IP. (See my prior posts opposing SOPA and linkwrapping the discussion.) Unlike SOPA’s disgustingly blatant rent-seeking, which was such an over-the-top abuse of the legislative process that it did not (and could not) support a principled or even intelligent conversations about it, OPEN provides a useful starting point for a sensible conversation that could actually lead to acceptable compromises.

For that reason alone, I think Congress should immediately stop all work on SOPA/PROTECT-IP and redirect that energy towards vetting this proposal. Having said that, for reasons I’ll explain in a moment, I continue to believe the assumptions underlying SOPA/PROTECT-IP and OPEN are misguided, meaning that forging a compromise from OPEN’s more sensible proposal may be tricky.

- The OPEN Act: significantly flawed, but more salvageable than SOPA/PROTECT-IP, by Eric Goldman, Ars Technica

I’ve written here opposing SOPA and opposing PROTECT-IP, two measures before Congress now that would (in my humble opinion) inflict harsh measures on suspected intellectual property piracy activity with insufficient judicial oversight. A champion for the anti-SOPA/PROTECTIP activity is Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and, along with Representative Darrell Issa of California, has introduced an alternative called OPEN: Online Protection & ENforcement of Digital Trade Act on a website that invites public comment on the text of the bill. As Eric points out in the above article, it isn’t great but it is significantly better if legislation on the topic is deemed necessary.

This is important stuff, and I encourage you to get educated and make your opinions known to your members in the House and Senate.

Cost Averages for Resource Sharing: Interlibrary Services, Circulation paging and OhioLINK

The cost areas of the study include Circulation services where a user pages a book and chooses to pick it up at a library ($2.03) or have it delivered to their campus office/dorm ($2.78) i.e. zmail. OhioLINK PCIRC data is costed out as well: both borrowing for our users ($3.06) and lending to OhioLINK patrons ($3.84). For Interlibrary Services, the study examines document delivery ($7.83) as well as borrowing ($8.63 for copies; $18.85 for loans) and lending ($0.47 for copies; $2.70 for loans).

- From the Director – December 7, 2011 – Cost Averages for Resource Sharing – Interlibrary Services, Circulation paging and OhioLINK – Guest Entry from Tony Maniaci (Circulation) and Brian Miller (Interlibrary Services), from the [Ohio State University Library] Director

This study offers some real numbers on the cost of circulating physical and digital copies to patrons at a major university. The PCIRC system, for those that aren’t familiar with OhioLINK lingo, is the patron-initiated librarian-unmediated inter-institution system pioneered by Ohio academic libraries and Innovative Interfaces. The reason the costs are dramatically different from typical ILL is that the requests and circulation transactions (paging slips, item routing, and checkout/checkin) are handled as close as possible to normal circulation transaction. The goal was to make the workflow as close to a local circulation as possible, thereby driving down the cost per transaction. It looks like there is one cost not factored into the OhioLINK portion — that of the software maintenance costs for the Innovative Interfaces system. For the OhioLINK central server, that cost is borne by a biannual state appropriation to the OhioLINK offices.

As one of the technologists that helped push the early OhioLINK PCIRC system along, it pleases me immensely that the payback to Ohio libraries is still so clear.

How to get a (better) response from your Systems Librarian / Sys Admin / Helpdesk Support Elf

After about 10 years supporting IT in libraries, I feel the festive need to spread some goodwill and have tried to scrawl down a few tips to help Librarians and their systems support folk better work together.

I’ve tried not to patronise, all of the below is based on personal experience in several roles. I know we as help providers can often do better, but equally, things can go much more smoothly if we get useful information upfront and some effort to manage expectation is made.

- How to get a (better) response from your Systems Librarian / Sys Admin / Helpdesk Support Elf, Ed Chamberlain’s blog

Ed’s post is the most complete, concise, and appropriately-humored description of what staff can do to support IT and what expectations they should have of IT staff. Print this out, post it to your wall, follow its advice, and we’ll all be more happy as well as productive in the end. Seriously.

With Thursday Threads coming on a Thanksgiving Thursday, it seems appropriate to use a theme of what I’m thankful for. So, in this edition of DLTJ Thursday Threads I’m offering three things: open source software, the internet, and public libraries. Reading this on Thanksgiving? Feel free to offer what you are thankful for in the comments.

Feel free to send this to others you think might be interested in the topics. If you find these threads interesting and useful, you might want to add the Thursday Threads RSS Feed to your feed reader or subscribe to e-mail delivery using the form to the right. If you would like a more raw and immediate version of these types of stories, watch my FriendFeed stream (or subscribe to its feed in your feed reader). Comments and tips, as always, are welcome.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving.

Doc Summit Wrap up: 4 Books written in 3 days!

In mid October a Document Summit was held at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California where documentation teams from 4 open source projects, KDE, OpenStreetMap, OpenMRS and Sahana Eden as well as a few documentation ‘free agents’ gathered to a write 4 books in the course of three days and take part in a two day unconference. [In this blog post], one of the dedicated documentation volunteers and the FLOSS Manuals founder/organizer recount their experiences over the course of the week.

- Doc Summit Wrap up: 4 Books written in 3 days!, Google Open Source Blog

One of the striking similarities I’ve found between the library profession and the open source movement is an innate desire to share amongst ourselves. In the library world the sharing ranges from our ideas for techniques and tactics to our materials and metadata. In the technology world it is best exemplified by the open source “gift culture” of creating, sharing and supporting a community of developers all scratching a common itch. I’m thankful for the open source developers, the documentation writers, and knowledge sharers that enable libraries to efficiently and effectively share the knowledge and services under their care.

Cybersecurity in the Balance: Weighing the Risks of the PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act

The Senate bill S.968, or the PROTECT IP Act, and the House bill H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act, have raised a great deal of controversy. This paper does not deal with the questions of economic value, free expression or other issues raised by advocates on both sides. Instead, I highlight the very real threats to cybersecurity in a small section of both bills in their attempts to execute policy through the Internet architecture. While these bills will not “break the Internet,” they further burden cyberspace with three new risks. First, the added complexity makes the goals of stability and security more difficult. Second, the expected reaction of Internet users will lead to demonstrably less secure behavior, exposing many American Internet users, their computers and even their employers to known risks. Finally, and most importantly, these bills will set back other efforts to secure cyberspace, both domestically and internationally. As such, policymakers are encouraged to analyze the net benefits of these bills in light of the increased cybersecurity risks.

- Cybersecurity in the Balance: Weighing the Risks of the PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act, by Allan A. Friedman, Fellow, The Brookings Institution

Earlier this month there was a groundswell of opposition to hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). In my own way, I registered my opposition to the pending legislation, as did thousands of others. I am optimistic that the bill will not become law, and viewed now from the perspective of the holiday I am thankful for that thing we call The Internet. That it was architected to put creative opportunity at the edges of the network, and that we have seen creativity flourish. That there are engineers and technicians watching the blinking lights around the clock to make sure they blink in the right sequence to get my bits from here to there. And that there are enough people concerned about tampering with the fundamentals of the internet that “strange bedfellows” in Congress now come together to state their opposition to the draft bill.

For Their Children, Many E-Book Fans Insist on Paper

Print books may be under siege from the rise of e-books, but they have a tenacious hold on a particular group: children and toddlers. Their parents are insisting this next generation of readers spend their early years with old-fashioned books.

- For Their Children, Many E-Book Fans Insist on Paper, by Matt Richtel and Julie Bosman, New York Times

I’m in the same category of parent as those in this article, although I’m not sure it is a conscious decision. My 10-year-old daughter reads about a quarter of her fiction on my iPad and begs me to buy more. I bought a couple of iPad picture books for my 6-year-old son for vacation last year, but after the novelty of turning pages with the flick of finger wore off, he wanted to go back to the physical books. Most of what my children read come from the local library, so in the last place I’m thankful for my local public library. (And, well, thankful too for the opportunity to attend ALA conferences and pick up good deals on children’s books during the last hours the exhibit floor is open.) Thanks Michael Casey for posting a link to the New York Times article on Google+.