explodedlibrary.info

revisiting linking rights

I have discovered a little contradiction within myself. On the one hand, I am a zealous believer in the right to link. Links have been and remain the lifeblood of the web. The anti-linking policies which seemed fashionable a few years ago were invariably flouted and led to the wide-spread ridicule of the things which they were meant to be “protecting.”

That’s only one aspect of the right to link. In 2005, the issue of the linker’s liability for linking to copyright infringing material hosted by third parties has received some judicial attention in Australia. But I would argue that even the Universal Music Australia v. Cooper case doesn’t yet endanger the right to create a bare link to infringing materials, provided there’s no question of “authorizing” copyright infringement.

A bare link does not provide any endorsement, agreement or authorization of the material being linked to. A bare link to a web site is just a statement of a fact - that at a certain place on the web this information exists. While there is any strength left in the ideas and expression of ideas dichotomy, US National Public Radio (a past offender) can't prevent a blogger from linking to them, no more than it can copyright any other fact, such as 2+2=4. For NPR to prevent anybody linking to them is like claiming copyright in their own physical address.

To use a different analogy, anti-linking policies make as much sense as an author claiming that merely being cited in a journal article infringes on her/his copyright.

It might be different if there’s more than a bare link happening. For example, if I linked directly to a certain image on the illegal-art website and wrote, “Check out this hilarious parody of the Starbucks logo!” That might get me into trouble, so I’m not going to do that.

I believe in the right to link and that if somebody chooses to make their website or blog available to the world, anybody has the right to link to it. On the other hand, in my own personal conduct I had decided that I would prefer being courteous over exercising this right. For example, with the list of Australian librarian blogs on my sidebar, I have often requested permission before adding blogs to this list.

Courtesy is very good and nice, but I have now decided that it is too much of a good thing if it gets in the way of adding new blogs to this list. It has even caused me to temporarily lose some of the blogs which I intended to add. I know, losing a blog is a very embarrassing and silly thing to do.

From now on, I’ll just add the blogs as I find them. If anybody has a problem with being added, they are welcome to email me about it and we can talk about it.

back into blogging

Hawai'i was lovely. I hope to put up an album of some of my photos on my blog. There is something about islands which can be just so relaxing. I also feel that when I visit my parents in Tasmania. When you live & work on an island, it's a different matter, and the best holiday is sometimes to escape the island - whether it's going to the Mainland (the Big Island) or to a smaller island like Maria Island.

I haven't caught up on all of my blog reading, but I did notice Meredith's latest contribution on the librarian shortage debate.

There are a lot of positive things to be said about choosing librarianship as a career - but the hope that you'll be inundated with job offers for librarian positions after graduating, that's not one of them. It's also not a very good reason to choose a career, even if it were true. Imagine this job interview.

Interviewer: Tell me, how did you decide to choose librarianship as your career?
Job applicant: Well I used to think it would be totally boring to work in a library, but then I heard that there's going to be a shortage of librarians, so I thought I might as well give this gig a whirl. Gives me better odds, doesn't it?
Interviewer: Really? Don't you have any other reasons?
Job applicant: Oh, and I really like books. And reading ...

signing off for a short break

I’m taking a little break from this blog while I’m away in Hawaii. I'm looking forward to do nothing for a little while and recharging my batteries. I won’t be reading any blogs or do any blog related writing while I’m away. I expect to have internet access – after all I’m going to be based in Waikiki (but hope to spend a lot of time on the Windward coast of Oahu, exploring some of the hiking trails and the quieter beaches), but don’t expect much in the way of replies to emails. Don’t count on prompt comment and trackback moderation happening either, and anything that’s too heavy will go right into my too hard basket to be dealt with upon my return in a little over a week.

decision about comments and trackbacks

I’ve tested the use of moderated comments and trackbacks in this blog for over two months now. As I mentioned at the outset, I had concerns that moderated commenting would reduce the number of legitimate comments I might receive and could impede the dialogue which takes place in comments. Those fears have been realized to a certain extent, and this is a clear negative thing about moderated commenting. On the other hand, it’s been such a relief not to worry at all about comment spammers. That problem is entirely gone now. I no longer have to fear that if I take a little break from the blog, as I’m about to, that when I return, it’s going to be overrun with spam.

These days, spammers aren’t the only problem with comments. It seems that the law is tending towards the view that bloggers are legally responsible for the comments which appear on their blogs. I wrote about one example over the weekend concerning anonymous political comments on Australian blogs. On the same day I heard about a SEO blogger who has been sued over comments appearing on his blog – ironically the blogger is somebody who has previously made critical comments here. If there’s a chance I’m going to be held responsible for other people’s writing on my blog, it’s nice to be able to control what appears on the blog. Of course, most of the time, moderation isn’t absolutely necessary – a bad comment can be deleted before it attracts any adverse consequences. But who knows, I can imagine a situation when the damage could be done in a very short time.

Comment moderation isn’t perfect, but it takes a lot of stress out of my blogging life, and so I’m going to keep it on. I’ve hardly mentioned trackbacks in this discussion, simply because I’ve so few legitimate trackbacks in the last 2 months – although there has been quite a lot of attempted trackback spam, which didn't get anywhere!

The icing on the cake is that comment moderation helps ward away the trolls and meanies. I will allow comments which include disagreement with me over the issues - but once they cross the line into insults and personal attacks, I have no qualms against blocking them.

nuanced, not negative

I admire the fact that Walt Crawford doesn't miss very much (with one trivial exception with respect to me, but I'm not going into that here as it's covered in the "Following Up" section of Cites & Insights 5:7). I'm not surprised that he noticed my comments on his investigation of the biblioblogosphere (the first and only time I hope to use this tongue-twister of a term), and mentioned them in Cites & Insights 5:11 (p. 23 of the pdf file) - although I wasn't sure if he would notice my more candid and less polished comments in the extended version of the post. But he did - I've been busted :)

Many of my blog posts are basically arguments with myself, and they don't lend themselves to easy summaries. Because of this, I'd like to clarify a few things which Walt Crawford mentioned while discussing the explodedlibrary's post about his survey.

Walt wondered if it would be overstating my criticisms to call my response to his survey negative. I'm glad that he wasn't certain about that, because I appreciated the survey as much as it made me uncomfortable. As I mentioned in my post, which perhaps I should have emphasized more strongly, I found out about some great blogs because of this - whether it was directly from the blogs which Walt mentioned, or ones which other bloggers mentioned in response to Walt's survey. If blogging is something important, particularly if library blogging matters, it is a subject worthy of study and analysis - and Walt's survey was a very good, albeit flawed (as is everything in the blogosphere, particularly in these early days) first step in this direction. I say all of that as a librarian who is looking at the big picture.

At same time, as an individual who happens to be a blogger and is a potential subject of such studies, I admit to feeling a little uncomfortable with the whole thing. It's something I'll probably get used to in time.

I think that both objective and subjective measures have their uses, but personally (not professionally), I am more interested in the subjective and tend to be skeptical of numbers. If other people prefer more objective bibliometric measures, I can understand that. I just hope that they are aware (as I think Walt is) that most objective measures usually contain subjective elements as well.

still no comment from Apple about the opening of iTMS in Australia

Of course, it would be some consolation if the Kazaa decision might speed things along with the Australian iTunes Music Store, but I think that is extremely wishful thinking.

Apple Australia yesterday refused to comment on a launch date for its iTunes music store, which would allow the legion of Australians who own iPods to legally purchase songs, rather than rip, burn and swap.
[Kristy Needham, Music industry banks on opening of online store, Sydney Morning Herald (7 September 2005)]

proposed Australian electoral law prohibiting anonymity in political blogs

Another interesting article in the Australian Financial Review which I'm not going to link to.
John Quiggin, Let a hundred blogs bloom, Australian Financial Review (1 September 2005).

The good thing is that the author is an Australian blogger, and I was able to find the guts of the issue in the article in one of his posts, which was followed up here.

The issue is that the Australian government is wanting to expand section 328 of the Electoral Act so that online publications (including blogs) commenting on political issues would be deemed electoral material for the purposes of the Act, and be subject to the Act's disclosure rules. The big impact would be that it would be illegal to allow anonymous commentors to write about political issues in a blog.

As mentioned by John Quiggin, it's another instance where online speech would be less protected than other speech (e.g. print newspaper letters to the editor and talkback radio). It would be extremely difficult to enforce, particularly against bloggers who want to remain anonymous, but it would still create a chilling effect, especially for bloggers who use their names.

Of course, the Howard government in Australia is more concerned with preventing criticism than preserving freedom of speech.