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QUESTION: Legal history re: journalistic protections/status for Indymedia (as entity + individuals)

Posted August 16th, 2010 by Anonymooose
question / pregunta: 

I need information regarding the history of legal cases where the question of journalistic protections/status for Indymedia as an entity and Indymedia journalists as individuals has been fought out. Cases are relevant in the US and abroad. Particularly relevant in Israel/Palestine. I am interested in all cases where this question has played out, regardless of determination. We are building a case to prevent the IDF from seizing cameras to gather information on activists and people involved in the struggle for a free Palestine. We need info ASAP to try and prevent them from seizing cameras.

Answers

Answer posted by: jim miller

The major legal databases that large academic libraries have access to: Lexis Academic, Westlaw, and Hein Online appear to have VERY little on actual legal cases regarding Indymedia. Lexis Academic does get 89 hits for the search: indymedia and attack* in "Major World Publications" (News); one as far back at April 14 2001. But a search of federal and state law cases gets nothing for indymedia, and nothing even for: independent news, alternative news, alternative press, or independent reporters. Alternative media gets one irrelevant hit ("alternative media" for supplying legal reports).

But European law search does get 4 hits for the search: Indymedia:

1. Copyright 2006 EUR-Lex, European Communities, Preparatory Acts, November 21, 2003, Report from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council and the European Economic and Social Committee - First Report on the application of Directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2000 on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market (Directive on electronic commerce), July 17, 2006
... Deutsche Bahn v. Indymedia, judgement by Rechtbank ...

2. Copyright 2006 EUR-Lex, European Communities, Parliamentary Questions, 2002 OJ C 229, March 04, 2002, WRITTEN QUESTION E-0546/02 by Ilka Schroder (GUE/NGL) to the Council. Raid by the Netherlands Police on the Vrankrijk Building in Amsterdam., July 17, 2006
... at http://www.indymedia.de/2002/01/ ...

3. Copyright 2007 Commission of the European Communities, EUR-Lex Database: Miscellaneous OJ Documents, December 5, 2007, 2007 OJ C 293, [No Date in Original], List of titles of Written Questions by Members of the European Parliament indicating the number, original language, author, political group, institution addressed, date submitted and subject of the question, February 27, 2009 ... for closure of the italy.indymedia.org website for ...

4.Copyright 2006 Commission of the European Communities, EUR-Lex Database: Miscellaneous OJ Documents, May 29, 2006, 2006 OJ C 125, [No Date in Original], WRITTEN QUESTIONS WITH ANSWER List of titles of Written Questions by Members of the European Parliament indicating the number, original language, author, political group, institution addressed, date submitted and subject of the question, February 27, 2009
... 2004) Subject: Seizure of Indymedia's European sites Answer from the ...
... 2004) Subject: Seizure of Indymedia's European sites Joint ...

Because of strict license agreements, to see full text you would need to go in person to a large public (university) academic library that has Lexis or other legal databases and is likely to allow on-campus access to them. Even trying to order these legal cases by interlibrary loan would be a very tricky prospect, since ILL offices are generally hesitant to download from databases unless they have very clear license agreements with publishers that allow this.

It is well worth trying the europa.eu Advanced Search for "all words" - indymedia legal (12 hits), or indymedia israel (3 hits). But you may well end up plowing through some very long PDF documents, and you can't rely on the PDF "search in document" (binocular icon) to find words - in 100+ page documents especially.

QUESTION: Social science fiction concerning the medicalization of social deviance

Posted August 12th, 2010 by scruffydog1973
question / pregunta: 

ANSWER: Social science fiction concerning the medicalization of social deviance

QUESTION: regarding copyright for study group website

Posted August 12th, 2010 by Anonymooose
question / pregunta: 

To whom it may concern,

I am involved in a queer theory group that recently started a wiki page in order to share pdf files of the articles and other reading material we will be discussing in our meetings. We were wondering if this might get us in trouble because of copyright laws, or if you think we might be okay. It is a small group, but I don't know if the size of our group would matter, or what would happen if the group grows in size (which we hope that it does).

Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing back from you.

Kelly Ginger

Answers

Answer posted by: Ignatz

Hi Kelly-

Great question. Copyright can be confusing, especially when it pertains to fair use (which seems to be what you're asking about), but I'll talk you through some of the guidelines.

Copyright extends to any reproduction of a work, including reproduction on websites. If you want to to direct your wiki users to content that is freely available online, you can link to the page where the resource is found, but you wouldn't be able to copy/paste it to your wiki without permission from the copyright holder. If you wanted to provide a citation to an article in a database, you could also do that, but you couldn't (for example) take something from behind a paywall and post it on your own page. If you're creating PDF's from books or magazines and posting them on the internet, you're likely to be running afoul of copyright laws. If you are linking to PDF's that the copyright holder has made available to the general public, you're fine.

Fair Use does provide for certain kinds of use of copyrighted work, and would extend to something like quoting short passages for purposes of discussion, but reproducing an entire chapter or article in its entirety would be a fairly clear violation. It almost sounds like you're talking about an online version of a course packet (which you might be familiar with from college), but materials in course packs are technically required to be cleared for use by their publishers before being distributed to students. Publishers do sometimes charge for use of coursepack materials even in educational settings.

The Stanford University Library has a fantastic page about Copyright and Fair Use, the following is a link to their explanation as to how these apply to websites:

http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter6/index.html

..and info about coursepacks, which might be helpful:

http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter7/7-a.html

You CAN post materials in their entirety if you obtain permission to do so from the copyright holder (usually the publisher, sometimes the author). Some publishers are happy to grant permissions, some not so much. Info about requesting permissions (again, from Stanford) here:

http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter1/1-a.html

I hope this helps!

QUESTION: u.s. military multiple deployment statistics

Posted July 19th, 2010 by jenna
question / pregunta: 

from an email, identifying info snipped for privacy:

> Hey yall. This is R, who attended a few of your workshops in Detroit. I am doing research and attempting to compound some numbers. I am having a hard time finding a citable statistics explaining percentages of raw numbers of U.S. troops deployed currently and over the course of the Iraq and Afghan wars. Specifically, we want to know how many were and are deployed multiple times, and if so, how many times/what percentage served how many tours. I could only find info from 2005 here: http://usmilitary.about.com/od/terrorism/a/deploymentrates.htm
>
> The info is integral to a campaign we are working on!
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Thanks, peace,

Answers

Answer posted by: jenna

US DoD and VA statistics:
http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/MMIDHOME.HTM
http://www.defense.gov/faq/pis/sites.html
http://www1.va.gov/vetdata/

Iraq and Afghanistan index (Brookings):
http://www.brookings.edu/saban/iraq-index.aspx
http://www.brookings.edu/foreign-policy/afghanistan-index.aspx

Answered by James

QUESTION: Member-owned corporation serving all needs of its members

Posted June 30th, 2010 by Librarian at Large
question / pregunta: 

Added by Jenna: This question was posed on an email discussion list and I believe answered privately. I'm marking it answered here, as well, though perhaps deleting it would be more appropriate.

Answers

Answer posted by: jenna

Am I missing the question part of this question? What is it you want to know?!?

QUESTION: National contraceptive rates

Posted June 24th, 2010 by Anonymooose
question / pregunta: 

I'd like to include the modern contraceptive rates for two countries in an article I'm writing--Kenya and Rwanda. Do you know where I can find the most current figure for that statistic?

Answers

Answer posted by: mfitzgibbons

The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division issued a report on World Contraceptive Use in 2009 (report number POP/DB/CP/Rev2009). You can download the data in excel format: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/WCU2009/WCP_2009/Data.html. The most recent figures for Kenya are from 2003, but there is 2007-2008 data for Rwanda. The rates are broken down by conception method.

You can also find other data from the United Nations' unified database that allows you to search statistics collected by its various agencies: http://data.un.org.

If you search for the word "contraceptive," you'll get a few indicators of contraception use, including by age, marital status, etc.

QUESTION: How do I do what you do?

Posted June 23rd, 2010 by Anonymooose
question / pregunta: 

I am a young professional librarian struggling to find ways to make her skills useful to the world at large. What is the best way to go about doing that if one is essentially broke and armed only with a Motorola Droid (which might explain the lack of funds to some extent)?

Answers

Answer posted by: jenna

Hi!

The way to do what we do is to join up! Create a user account, and join our email list. Important: Once you have created your account, you have to email info@radicalreference.info and let us know what it is so we can give you permission to create and edit content.

You can ask on the email list if there are other folks in your area to connect with.

QUESTION: the importance of media/documentation about social change

Posted June 23rd, 2010 by Anonymooose
question / pregunta: 

Does anyone know of good writing about the importance of documentation/media about social change movements. I am writing a grant to start a program that teaches students how to document and produce a series of videos about this garden they work on at their school in East New York and am looking for texts about why documentation makes the health education and food justice work that they are doing more effective.

QUESTION: Connecting to Radical Feminist Groups in Philadelphia

Posted June 23rd, 2010 by jbeek
question / pregunta: 

Do you have any suggestions for finding feminist groups in Philadelphia? I am planning a public art project for a group high school and college students about 'Pioneering Women.' We are looking for some sort of radical/feminist group to partner with us on the project.

[NOTE: during our recent server migration, our contact info for this question may have been misplaced - please contact info-at-radicalreference-dot-info if this is your question, or you know whose it is. Our apologies.]

Answers

Answer posted by: mfitzgibbons

This is not a definitive answer, but here are a few suggestions of groups that you can pursue. I found these organizations by crawling through the pages of larger women's organizations, particularly their "resources" sections.

QUESTION: Sarah Palin quote (alleged)

Posted June 16th, 2010 by Anonymooose
question / pregunta: 

I keep reading this, did former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin actually say/write: "If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for us."

Answers

Answer posted by: shqippy

We can't pin this one on Palin. It's been floating around for quite a while. There's a brief history of this line at http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003084.html

If Palin did repeat it, we'd presumably have read about it in our fave news sources. Thanks for asking!

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