The BC Civil Liberties Association is holding a free public event on RFID titled What’s the frequency Kenneth? on Thursday, May 15, 2008 7:30 pm at the Vancouver Public Library in the Alma VanDusen and Peter Kay Rooms Here’s a pdf of the poster.There was also an informative link on Boingboing about how to kill/block an RFID chip.

Many cool links - to blogposts of this conference held earlier this month in Amsterdam, the keynote The Audiovisual Commons and The Social Contract by Rick Prelinger of the Internet Archive can be found on the conference website.   Thanks to David Bollier and Peter Suber.

Here’s the backgrounder I pulled together for the BCLA Resolution on Network (Net) Neutrality. A great debt is owed to Danielle Dennie (of LibrarianActivist fame) for her assistance in writing both the resolution and this backgrounder.

Net Neutrality in a Nutshell:
Backgrounder for the BCLA AGM, April 19, 2008

What is “Net Neutrality”?
Network (“Net”) Neutrality is “the principle that all information that is sent over the Internet should be treated equally.” This means that:

• Internet Service Providers (ISPs, like Telus, Shaw, Rogers or Bell) shouldn’t interfere in web content getting to you
• All sites and formats should be treated the same by ISPs
• Users are free to go where they want on the Internet, and access whatever information they wish

Who is opposed to Net Neutrality, and why?
The primary opponents of regulation to require net neutrality are telecommunications and cable companies. They argue that they need the ability to block or filter their networks in order to prevent illegal file sharing, viruses and spam, and congestion due to bandwidth-intensive traffic (such as video streaming). Net neutrality regulation would also prevent ISPs from levying surcharges on users or content providers who want premium (fast or equal) access to their networks.

Who supports Net Neutrality, and why?
The National Union of Public and General Employees (which represents more than 340,000 workers across the country), the Council of Canadians, the Campaign for Democratic Media, and the Canadian Association of Internet Providers, and the Independent Film and Television Alliance, to name a few. The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage also raised concerns about non-neutrality’s impact on Canadian heritage, in their recent report.

Primary arguments for net neutrality are that both the Internet and Canadian Telecommunications Policy rely on the principle of “common carriage” – that public networks shouldn’t discriminate among content. Supporters of net neutrality don’t want to see the Internet run by a bidding war, with fast access sold to the highest bidder. As Michael Geist warns, “imagine a world in which Chapters cannot compete in the online book space because its content is on the slow lane while Amazon is on the fast lane.” That is a world without net neutrality.

What are some examples of non-neutrality?
Non-neutrality is often likened to a highway with a toll fast lane for content providers who pay a premium, and a regular slow lane for the rest of us. Here are just a few exampled of violations of net neutrality in Canada:

• During the 2005 Telus labour dispute, Telus blocked its internet subscribers from accessing a website that supported striking union members (and 766 unrelated sites with the same IP address)
• In 2006, Vonage filed a request for a CRTC investigation because Shaw was privileging its own VoIP service by charging a $10 fee to customers who use another company’s VoIP service
• This March, the CBC decided to use BitTorrent to distribute an episode of Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister. When ISP “throttling” (deliberately slowing high-bandwidth activities) made the download of this show excessively long, Bell and Rogers Communications’ practice of “traffic shaping” came to the public’s attention – and that of smaller ISPs who buy wholesale access from the big ISPs.

Do any existing laws or regulations pertain to Net Neutrality?
The principle of Common Carriage is enshrined in Canada’s Telecommunications Act (1993), Sec. 27(2): “No Canadian carrier shall, in relation to the provision of a telecommunications service or the charging of a rate for it, unjustly discriminate or give an undue or unreasonable preference toward any person, including itself, or subject any person to an undue or unreasonable disadvantage.”

But in 1999 the CRTC decided that regulating the Internet was beyond its scope. The CRTC is currently reviewing its jurisdiction over new media and their report should be released in May. Several organizations and individuals are filing submissions to the CRTC this spring, and there is a call for public hearings on the issue.

About 30 people came to our session on open source software at BCLA. Our goal was to have an accessible session for regular human beings. From the front of the room I was able to tell that people (geeks and human beings alike) were engaged and interested. After the session we got some really good feedback from academic, public and special librarians as well as public library trustees and vendors.

Here is our handout (pdf). Here are Catherine Howett’s slides on Zotero and Sage (ppt).

Click here to read the rest of the post.

This video is one of the best explanations of net neutrality that I’ve seen. Look past the American images or fill in Canadian phone and cable companies and substitute the House of Commons for Congress and it’s describes what’s happening in Canada.

“You connect to the web through pipes owned by telephone and cable companies, but the deal is they’re not allowed to mess with what’s inside those pipes…everybody’s website gets the same speed and quality, that’s called Net Neutrality”

Check out Devon Greyson’s resolution on net neutrality.

Also, check out the Stop the Throttler campaign that is drawing attention to Bell and Rodger’s practice of restricting bandwidth on downloading. Join the Facebook group, if that’s your thing.

On Open Access News today, Peter Suber has blogged some notes and links to two recent commons-related conferences:

Amsterdam: Economics of the Commons: Strategies for Sustainable Access and Creative Reuse of Sounds and Images Online

Canberra, Australia: Foundations of Open: Technological and Digital Knowledge, Local 2020 Summit

Speaking of Commons-Related Conferences, mark your calendars for October 23 - 25, 2008 for:

Jumpstarting the Public Sphere: Information Policy in the 21st Century (evening of Oct. 23, all-day Oct. 24); pricing that you definitely can afford. Venue: Vancouver Public Library.

Media Democracy Day: Saturday, Oct. 25, Vancouver Public Library. Speakers & Media Fair. No charge.

Watch for updates as planning for the 2008 IPC conference unfolds!

I’ve been thinking a lot about the OpenOffice suite (Writer, Calc, Base etc.) and the MS Office suite (Word, Excel, Access etc). I’ve been reading reviews and compairsions between the two sets of software. I’ve enlisted geeky friends to help me evaluate both software suites.

The OpenOffice suite is generally comparable to MS Office. Actually I think Writer is better than Word. The consensus on the websites that I’ve read is that Calc is better than Excel for beginner users but Excel is better for the advanced user. My partner, who occasionally sends me complex Excel formulas to gush over, remains skeptical that Calc is anywhere close to her beloved Excel. She’ll phone and blurt out a feature, like “pivot tables” or “vlookup” and ask me if “Calc can do that?”–so far it can.

The one place where I have had difficulties has been moving between Writer and Word.  Writer can open .doc formats (OpenOffice 3.0 available in beta at the end of this month will be able to open Word 2007 .docx files, which older versions of Word can’t do).  It’s also possible to save a document as a .doc file in Writer.  However if I’m working on a Writer document that someone else on my team needs to change I find that some of the formatting is lost when I save the document in Word format.  This wouldn’t be an issue if everyone were using OpenOffice.

So, why aren’t libraries using OpenOffice?  I’m not sure if it’s realistic for libraries to adopt many types of open source software if their funding organizations (for public libraries, the cities or towns that fund them, and for academic libraries the universities or colleges as a whole). I’m not sure why municipalities and universities are not moving to using OpenOffice and other open source software. I imagine that soon many organizations will be paying to upgrade to Word 2007. I’m not sure why libraries are not taking a leadership role in trying to make this change to open source. It would save money in the short and long term.

When European and South American countries have legislated that government bodies must use open standards so there are guarantees that the file format of a document can be accessed in the future.  Why are we still locking into proprietary file formats that may not be readable in the future? When I worked at the Vancouver Public Library there was still a copy of Lotus 1-2-3 kicking around because some of the older spreadsheets from the City were in that format.

I might be missing some of the picture, but I’m not sure what the big hurdle is.  Why can’t this happen?

The open access recommendations endorsed unanimously by the European Universities Association (EUA) have just been published in the <a href=”http://www.eua.be/index.php?id=48&no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=518&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=1″>EUA Newsletter</a>.

In brief, the EUA calls on every university in Europe to develop an institutional repository (or arranging for sharing a repository), and requiring faculty to self-archive their work immediately on publication, with provision for delaying open access if required.

Further details, my comments, and links can be found on my blog, <a href=”http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2008/04/european-universities-association-eau.html”>The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics</a>.

Thanks to Bernard Rentier and Stevan Harnad.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has just published a new book on telecom policy in Canada - for details, see Librarian Activist.Org

The National Conference for Media Reform, June 6 - 8, 2008 in Minneapolis is billed as a major event in a time that is seen as a tipping point for media reform - details here http://www.freepress.net/conference

Following is an announcement about an academic symposium to be held just before the main event:

This is a quick update and reminder about the symposium for scholars http://www.freepress.net/conference/academic08> which will take place in Minneapolis on June 5th, a day before the National Conference on Media Reform http://www.freepress.net/conference . The symposium is called “Academic Research for Media Reform,” and the program is now online <http://www.freepress.net/conference/academic08> <http://www.freepress.net/conference/academic08> . We urge you to register and join us there in this unique opportunity to engage in a dialogue between academics and media reform advocates.

We are very excited about this year’s program. It offers an expansive presentation of scholarship on the most pressing issues in the media reform community. The program committee—through a double-blind peer review process—generated 8 sessions of papers submitted by leading academics from the nation’s top schools. The sessions will focus on media ownership (and the FCC’s research effort), sustainability of independent media, access to dominant platforms, network neutrality, international media reform efforts, and the media reform movement itself.

The symposium also features three special sessions. There will be an opportunity for a roundtable discussion with members of the “future of American telecommunications working group” (<http://www.fact-wg.info/> <http://www.fact-wg.info/> ). This group is currently designing a new media and telecommunications policy framework for the new administration in 2009. In addition, there will be a session on “copyright and free speech” in which Neil Netanel will present his new book “Copyright’s Paradox” and Saskia Sassen, the Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University will deliver a key note speech.

All registrants to the symposium are eligible for the “early-bird” fare for the NCMR itself — we urge you to stay for both.

We hope the symposium will be an opportunity to strengthen the ongoing commitment to a fruitful cooperation between the academic and activist worlds as well as to find immediate, practical applications for this critical work.

We look forward to seeing all of you in Minneapolis!

Amit M. Schejter, Ph.D. Ben Scott
Assistant Professor of Telecommunications Policy Director
Pennsylvania State University Free Press