| Rounding up Lost Doggies and Practicing What you Preach...? |
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I am not one to argue Copyright law- Ill let Tinfoil and Skinnydevil untangle all that, even though my major was Legal Research (well, Legal Assisting/Paralegal whatever- I dont work in that field now, anyway). I am old-fashioned and I buy my CDs. I like Anthraxs sophisticated argument on the DVD Music of Mass Destruction: To paraphrase it: please dont burn a copy of this DVD its like someone going in your house and stealing your stuff. Nuff said. Argue with me later.... When it comes to Copyright law, it seems the American government practices what it preaches, according to a Federal Computer Week (www.FCW.com) article titled Fugitive Documents Elude Preservationists (May 9, 2005). The American Government has folks working in the Government Printing Office to preserve Government information. Apparently some electronic publications have gone missing, lost, AWOL- something like that- and are now branded fugitive documents. The GPO is now on a web-harvesting mission to track these fugitives down. Other Federal agencies that have an interest in preserving national heritage, such as the Library of Congress (LOC) and National Archives & Records Administration (NARA), are interested in plumbing the binary depths of file thirteen. They are out there mining to find hidden gems lost somewhere out there in the cold black cyber-mine. Why is all that important? Well, in the words of former OMB branch chief Dan Chenok, these fugitives documents need to be properly harvested, catalogued, and verified as bona fide authentic federal products because keeping proper record of the government activities is important for government access, government accountability, and historical preservation. Another reason for preservation of fugitive documents: charting how candidates ran their campaigns and exactly how the candidates political opinions or policies may have changed over time. Historical politically significant info is also worth preserving, as with gubernatorial re-calls (think California). Wouldnt you want to preserve Candidate Xs 2002 website just to see what he/she promised and didnt deliver during his/her term? So, what happens when government harvesters want to pull something from a non-government site? This begs the question of how Copyright laws come into play. The LOC has eight staff members who are tasked with ensuring legal compliance to copyright laws. These eight dedicated LOC employees ask for web page owner/creators permission to harvest data. Says Martha Anderson, who is the project manager for LOCs Office of Strategic Initiatives, if we dont get permission, then we dont collect. The article ends with a reference to libraries utilizing open source tools to selectively harvest information. Anyway- I gotta go. I just saw a Fugitive Clinton Era Executive memo being chased by a one-armed man and six LOC employees. Talk amongst yourselves . Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites          Add your comment
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