From: "Carl M. Kadie" <kadie@eff.org>
Date: Sun, 26 Dec 93 14:22:00 PST
To: wcs@anchor.ho.att.com
Subject: Re:  anonymous video rental store - Libraries
Message-ID: <199312262221.RAA16823@eff.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>Out of curiousity, has any ftp-archive maintainer tried to join the
>American Library Association, either directly or as part of some
>university's library system?

I think anyone can join the ALA. Their Office for Intellectual Freedom
has run at least one computer censorship item in it's newsletter. The
director of the OIF, Dr. Judith Krug (U59587@UICVM.uic.edu) was at
Computers, Freedom, and Privacy '93. There is a good chance she'll be
at CFP '94 since it is in Chicago, her city and ALA headquarters.

>It would be an interesting way to start building precedents.

Under some state laws, a computer BBS might be called a "library"
(depending on how it is run). See references at the end of this note.

>Are there any equivalent international or
>non-US national library associations that take strong anti-censorship
>pro-privacy positions?

I don't know of one, but Article 19 is an international anticensorship
organization (see refs).

- Carl


ANNOTATED REFERENCES

(All these documents are available on-line. Access information follows.)

=================
news/cafv02n16: Message-Id: <1992Mar31.152657.1753@eff.org>
=================
An article from the Computers and Academic Freedom News 02.16

Note 12 is about the Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom.

12. "One place good place to report censorship incidents is the
Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom. Reports here may help increase
awareness of, for example, computer-media censorship. The
Newsletter only prints reports that are documented with newspaper
articles."

=================
news/cafv01n27
=================
The eighth note tries to define "library" to see how well term can
cover a Netnews service. The note lists the legal definition of
"library" for the few states that have such a definition. Indiana's
definition seems the best.<1991Sep12.185627.26936@eff.org>

=================
civil-liberty/anti-censorship.addr
=================
* Addresses for Anti-Censorship Organizations

Addresses for a number of organizations interested in censorship issues
(including Article 19).

=================
=================

If you have gopher, you can browse the CAF archive with the command
   gopher gopher.eff.org

These document(s) are also available by anonymous ftp (the preferred
method) and by email. To get the file(s) via ftp, do an anonymous ftp
to ftp.eff.org (192.77.172.4), and get file(s):

  pub/Academic/news/cafv02n16
  pub/Academic/news/cafv01n27
  pub/Academic/civil-liberty/anti-censorship.addr

To get the file(s) by email, send email to archive-server@eff.org.
Include the line(s) (be sure to include the space before the file
name):

send acad-freedom/news cafv02n16
send acad-freedom/news cafv01n27
send acad-freedom/civil-liberty anti-censorship.addr